Do you remember an asteroid that doesn’t hit the Earth? We can send a mission to explore it

Last year, astronomers detected asteroids near Earth (NEA) 2024 YR4, which orbit the Sun every four years and regularly cross the Earth’s orbit. The nature of the orbit makes it a potentially dangerous object (PHO). This means that one day it could pose a collision risk to the Earth. Recently, refined estimations of orbits rule out the possibility of hitting the Earth in 2032. Nevertheless, we may encounter more closely with the Earth in the distant future.

This also provides an opportunity for a close flyby mission to study YR4 up close and therefore insight into the early solar system. In a recent paper, researchers Adam Hibbard and Marshall Eubanks investigated the feasibility of various mission architectures. The mission could encounter asteroids as early as 2028, but multiple launch windows have been identified. This mission can also implement sample returns and complement future attempts to explore Hayabusa 1 and 2, Osiris-Rex Missions, and NEA.

Adam Hibberd is a software and research engineer at Astronautics with an astronaut research (I4IS) initiative, and Hibberd Astronautics Ltd.’s draft version of their paper, “Preliminary Analysis of the Feasibility of Mission to Asteroids 2024”, was recently submitted to the ARXIV Preprint Server and has been reviewed for publication in Acta Astronautica.

Asteroid YR4 was discovered on December 27, 2024 by the Asteroid Ground Impact Last Altitude System (ATLAS), an early warning system developed by the University of Hawaii. At the time, astronomers estimated there was a 1% chance that the Earth could have an impact on December 22, 2032. By February, these estimates had temporarily risen to 2.3%, essentially reducing the estimate of their impact on zero, prior to sophisticated measurements by major telescopes around the world.

Asteroids are essentially the remaining material from the formation of the solar system. 4.5 billion years ago. Therefore, studying these bodies can uncover appetizing clues about how our systems evolved and address key questions about how life emerged. This makes the NEA particularly interesting to scientists. Because scientists can reach the main belt or later asteroids more easily. As Eubanks told the universe today via email:

“Well, I personally doubt it’s primitive. It’s part of an asteroid and I think it was knocked out of orbit at ~4.18 au (that aphelion).

In recent years, multiple sample returns have been implemented at the NEA, leading to a very interesting revelation. This includes Jaxa’s Hayabusa Mission, who rings asteroid 25143 Itokawa in 2005, and Randabus Booger with 162173 Ryugu in 2018. Benne.

In addition to confirming that S-type asteroids are the source of the most common type of metstone, Itokawa samples also revealed the presence of water and extraterrestrial mineral grains. Meanwhile, Bennu’s sample revealed comet particles and 20 types of amino acids. The largest ever returned to Earth sample of Osiris Rex (September 2023) contained organic compounds and hydration minerals. These samples support the theory that asteroids and comets are responsible for supplying building blocks of water and life to Earth billions of years ago.

But it goes beyond science that makes YR4 a great candidate for future missions. As Eubanks has shown, its position as a PHO also means it will help inform planetary defense strategies.

“It’s a potentially dangerous asteroid that could still hit the moon in 2032, and even if it wasn’t, it could become a real danger in the future,” he said. “It’s important to characterize it in preparation for both if it becomes a future risk and useful exercises that will teach you how to better examine these bodies (as a decade-old research state on the NASA planet.”

As part of their research, Eubanks and Hibberd investigated a variety of mission architectures that could flare up alongside the YR4, including the close encounters in 2032. This mission exploits software known as optimal interplanetary orbital software (OIT), developed by Hibberd and I4IS. They also adopted the new horizon as a reference mission as an example. However, their mission architecture was not limited to this or the launch window for 2032.

In particular, Eubanks explained how advances in small satellites and gram-scale Wafercraft allow for low-cost missions that can be flew as part of a larger mission.

“The 2024 YR4 presents us with an opportunity-rich environment. One thing that excites me here is that we can use small spaceships (cubesats or discs) to explore it. For example, the launch of CLPS or Artemis in mid-2028 could potentially send small nano-spacecrafts in late December, for example. Exploring many PHAs on a daily basis (and even seeing them for asteroid mining), this must be done on small spaceships, and the YR4 offers an opportunity to start this process.”

Asteroid research is a growing field, and the mission to the NEA parallels the study of the main belt and outer solar system populations. Over the next few years, missions to interstellar objects (ISOS) (another proposal from researchers of Eubanks and I4IS, like Project Lyra) will also need to be realized. The results of their research not only expanded our knowledge about the solar system, but also expanded how exospore systems evolved over time.