If an asteroid is on a collision course with the moon, what should humanity do? Try to nudge the space rock out of the way before it strikes? Obliterate it with a nuclear explosion?

Those are the questions explored in a recent paper from more than a dozen researchers, including several NASA scientists. And they're not purely hypothetical: An asteroid known as 2024 YR4 is estimated to have a 4% chance of hitting the moon in 2032.

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Such a cosmic collision could produce debris “up to 1,000 times above background levels over just a few days, possibly threatening astronauts and spacecraft” in low-Earth orbit, the researchers wrote in the paper, which was uploaded to the preprint website arXiv on Sept. 15 but has yet t

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