In a rare "time-critical" decision, the James Webb Space Telescope will study the true size of the "potentially hazardous" asteroid 2024 YR4 twice over the next few months. The asteroid has a roughly 2.3% chance of impacting Earth in 2032.
It’s going to be pretty easy to assess where the meteor will land once we get a few more observations, it’s probably not going to hit the earth at all, Webb is capable of so much more and better things than to get caught looking for a piddly tiny rock that’s caught the news cycles attention.
There’s probably larger rocks headed our way that it would observe by chance while it was doing it’s actual mission.
Taking time to reposition it to observe this spec of rock, while there are other ways of observing that rock, is such a waste of mission time.
It’s going to be pretty easy to assess where the meteor will land once we get a few more observations, it’s probably not going to hit the earth at all, Webb is capable of so much more and better things than to get caught looking for a piddly tiny rock that’s caught the news cycles attention.
There’s probably larger rocks headed our way that it would observe by chance while it was doing it’s actual mission.
Taking time to reposition it to observe this spec of rock, while there are other ways of observing that rock, is such a waste of mission time.
Thanks for the explanation! That’s not something I knew