Asteroid 2024 YR4 has a 4% chance of hitting the moon. Here's why that's a scientific goldmine

There is a silver lining to every situation. In 2032, the Moon itself could look particularly bright if it were hit by a 60-meter-wide asteroid. The chances of such an event occurring are still relatively low (only about 4%) but not negligible. And scientists are beginning to prepare for both the bad (massive risks to satellites and huge meteors raining down on much of the planet) and the good (a unique chance to study the geology, seismology and chemical composition of our nearest neighbor). A new paper by Yifan He of Tsinghua University and his co-authors, published on the preprint server arXiv, looks at the bright side of all the cool science we can do if a collision does indeed occur.