Nigeria, eight other countries at risk of ‘city-killer’ asteroid impact — NASA scientist
A scientist at NASA’s Catalina Sky Survey Project, David Rankin, has warned that a massive asteroid, 2024 YR4, could potentially collide with Earth in 2032, with a risk corridor spanning nine countries, including Nigeria.
According to him, the asteroid, estimated to be 90 metres wide—about the size of Big Ben—currently has a 2.3% chance of impact.
His projections indicate that the asteroid’s risk corridor stretches from South America, across the Pacific Ocean, through South Asia, the Arabian Sea, and Africa. Countries within this corridor include Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Nigeria.
The final impact location would depend on the Earth’s rotation at the time of collision. If it were to strike, scientists estimate that the asteroid could flatten structures within a two-mile radius. A similar-sized asteroid, which hit Siberia in 1908, destroyed 830 square miles of forest.
2024 YR4 was first discovered in December 2024 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System station in Chile, funded by NASA. At that time, its probability of impact was 1.3%, but it still ranked highest on NASA’s risk list.
An international team is now using the James Webb Space Telescope to refine impact risk assessments. A spokesperson from the European Space Agency (ESA) told the Daily Mail, “Astronomers around the world are using powerful telescopes to measure the asteroid’s orbit as accurately as possible. But knowing its orbit will only tell us the asteroid could impact Earth, not how significant an impact could be.”
The ESA stressed the importance of determining the asteroid’s size, as a 40-metre asteroid poses a much lower hazard than one measuring 90 metres.
The James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared sensors are expected to provide a more precise size estimate by measuring the heat radiating off the asteroid, helping scientists determine the potential scale of destruction.
