In a plan ripped straight from the script of the 1998 movie “Armageddon,” scientists have suggested a simple, if violent, method of dealing with a troublesome asteroid.
Just nuke it.
But in this case, it’s not Earth that is the celestial body under threat. And the plan definitely would not require sending Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck on a harrowing journey to the space rock itself.
Instead, a team of researchers that includes NASA scientists have put forth the bold idea of launching nuclear bombs at an asteroid with a slight chance of hitting the moon in 2032.
The asteroid in question might sound familiar to you. Dubbed 2024 YR4, the space rock big enough to level a city grabbed headlines earlier in 2025 when it initially posed a historically high chance of crashing into Earth.
Here’s a refresher on 2024 YR4, and what to know about the new nuclear option.
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What is asteroid 2024 YR4? Does it pose a threat to Earth?
An image of the asteroid 2024 YR4 taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, released on February 25, 2025, shows a frame of the asteroid’s path through the night sky in January 2025, observed at infrared wavelengths with the HAWK-I instrument.
Because it’s big enough to be deemed a “city killer,” asteroid 2024 YR4 became a source of alarm due to the uncommonly high risk it had of colliding with Earth on Dec. 22, 2032.
The space rock was reported Dec. 27, 2024, to the Minor Planet Center, the official authority for observing and reporting new asteroids, comets and other small bodies in the solar system. The object eventually caught the attention of NASA and other astronomers when it rose on the U.S. Space Agency’s Sentry Impact Risk Table, which tracks any known asteroids with a non-zero probability of hitting Earth.
For a time, it was the only object among more than 37,000 known large space rocks with any chance of hitting Earth anytime soon – with its probability of impact even rising to a record level of 3.1%.
That began to change in late February as more precise observations allowed scientists to effectively winnow down the asteroid’s odds of impact to a number so low, it might as well be zero.
How big is asteroid 2024 YR4?
Based observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists know the asteroid’s approximate length could reach nearly 300 feet, or about the size of a 10-story building.
Earth safe from YR4 asteroid, but impact odds for moon keep rising
While Earth may no longer be at risk of a calamitous collision with the asteroid, the moon isn’t so lucky.
Webb’s initial observations in March saw the odds of YR4 crashing into the moon rising from the 1.7% figure calculated in February to 3.8%, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which tracks objects like asteroids at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Those odds rose once again to 4.3% after Webb’s latest observations were made in May. According to NASA, the data helped improve scientists’ understanding of where the asteroid will be on Dec. 22, 2032, by nearly 20%.
What would happen if asteroid hit moon?
A strawberry moon as seen from Skinner Butte in Eugene, Oregon, in 2016.
If our cosmic neighbor were to take such a hit from an asteroid of that size, NASA has assured that the moon’s orbit around Earth would not be altered.
But in a new paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed, a team of researchers that includes NASA scientists argue that a lunar impact of that magnitude could kick up debris that would threaten Earth’s satellites, and even astronauts on the International Space Station.
Scientists suggest blowing up asteroid with nuclear weapons
For that reason, the researchers put forth a number of plans for scientists to prevent a collision – the most extreme of which is to launch a bunch of nukes at the asteroid.
Scientists may know the asteroid’s approximiate size, but they don’t have accurate approximations of the asteroid’s weight. Considering that, the researchers argue the world’s space agencies wouldn’t be able to pull off a reconnaissance mission to gather data, and then manufacture a spacecraft in time with the specifications needed to successfully crash into and knock the asteroid off its current trajectory.
Such a plan also comes with the added risk of inadvertently pushing the asteroid onto a collision course with Earth, the researchers claim.
But firing an arsenal of nuclear weapons at the asteroid doesn’t require as much subtlety or nuance.
That’s why, the researchers argued, detonating the space rock using “nuclear explosive devices” should be a sufficient method for dealing with the slight threat.
The mission, were it to happen, would need to launch between 2029 to late 2031, the team concluded.
The paper was uploaded Sept. 15 to arxiv, a preprint research repository.
NASA has already nudged asteroid in DART test
If an asteroid ever needs to be diverted from a collision course with Earth, a future planetary defense mission may be more likely to resemble a test NASA pulled off three years ago.
In September 2022, the U.S. space agency demonstrated it was possible to nudge an incoming asteroid out of harm’s way by slamming a spacecraft into one as part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART.
Launched in November 2021, DART traveled for more than 10 months before crashing into Dimorphos at roughly 14,000 mph. Though the tiny asteroid posed no threat to Earth, NASA had set out to test a method of redirecting the orbital paths of threatening objects hurtling toward Earth.
As of October 2024, a craft from the European Space Agency is on the way to get an upclose look at the asteroid’s remnants.
Hera launched Oct. 7 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on a two-year journey to Dimorphos, which is a tiny moonlet asteroid orbiting the larger 2,560-foot space rock Didymos.
The spacecraft is expected to enter the Didymos binary system’s orbit in October 2026, when it will determine just how effective NASA’s test was, according to the agency. Officials hope that by analyzing the results of NASA’s experiment, space agencies will be better positioned to repeat the maneuver.
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NASA scientists say nuclear devices could stop asteroid headed at moon
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