Odds of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth drop from record high ...

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Hubble snaps photo of dusty Magellanic cloud in Tarantula nebula

New image from the Hubble Space Telescope peers into a dusty region of space - home to some of the largest stars know to man.

• Asteroid 2024 YR4, measuring 130 to 300 feet wide, currently has a 1.5% chance of impacting Earth in 2032.
• The odds of impact have decreased from initial estimates, and NASA expects them to continue evolving with further observations.
• While an impact could cause major damage, it is not large enough to trigger a mass extinction event.

The odds of asteroid 2024 YR4 striking Earth in 2032 have fallen to 1.5%, NASA announced Wednesday.

That's down from the estimated 3.1% chance the agency said on Tuesday in a record high for an object the size of YR4 or larger. The asteroid is 130 to 300 feet wide.

Overnight observations by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies dropped the likelihood of impact.

"NASA expects the impact probability to continue to evolve as new observations of asteroid 2024 YR4 are made over the coming days and weeks," NASA wrote in a Wednesday blog post.

Astronomers expected YR4's odds of impact to rise before they go down as scientists continue to make more accurate observations of its trajectory.

The asteroid will continue to be visible from Earth through April, giving astronomers some time to gather data with ground-based telescopes. While the asteroid won't again be observable from Earth until June 2028, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study it in March from orbit.

What are the odds of 2024 YR4 hitting Earth?

The asteroid 2024 YR4 currently has 1.5% odds of hitting Earth.

Among the more than 37,000 known large space rocks, it's the only one right now with any chance of hitting Earth anytime soon.

The space rock was spotted late last year and reported on Dec. 27, 2024, to the Minor Planet Center, the official authority for observing and reporting new asteroids, comets and other small bodies in the solar system. The object eventually caught the attention of NASA and other astronomers when it rose on the U.S. Space Agency's Sentry Impact Risk Table, which tracks any known asteroids with a non-zero probability of hitting Earth.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 rates 3 of 10 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, a method for astronomers to categorize and rate the threat of near-Earth objects.

What would happen if YR4 crashed into Earth?

Even though the asteroid is relatively small, it could still be what some are calling a "city killer" because if it were to hit Earth, it could cause significant devastation in a populous area.

“If you put it over Paris or London or New York, you basically wipe out the whole city and some of the environs,” Bruce Betts, chief scientist of The Planetary Society, told AFP

If it did collide with Earth, an asteroid of that size could cause an explosion in the atmosphere or even create an impact crater, according to the Planetary Society. Both possibilities would likely cause devastating damage on the ground, though not enough for it to be a mass extinction event.

The International Asteroid Warning Network put out a list of possible impact locations, which largely includes empty oceans and uninhabited or sparsely populated areas in the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, parts of Africa, the Arabian Sea and South Asia. However, some possible impact locations are densely populated areas.