NASA scientists have found an asteroid named 2024 YR4, which might collide with Earth in 2032, posing a 1-in-83 chance of impact. The asteroid, measuring around 130 to 300 feet across, is too small to threaten the extinction of humankind, but experts warn that it could cause massive destruction if it hits a major city. The impact would unleash an energy equivalent to 8 megatons of TNT-more than 500 times the power of the atomic bomb that obliterated Hiroshima, Japan.
According to NASA, the scientific analysis of a near-Earth asteroid, designated 2024 YR4, indicates it has a more than 1% chance of impacting Earth on December 22, 2032-which also means there is about a 99% chance this asteroid will not impact. Such initial analysis will change over time as more observations are gathered. Currently, no other known large asteroids have an impact probability above 1%.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first reported on December 27, 2024, to the Minor Planet Centre-the international clearinghouse for small-body positional measurements-by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System station in Chile. The asteroid, which is estimated to be about 130 to 300 feet wide, caught astronomers’ attention when it rose on the NASA automated Sentry risk list on December 31, 2024. The Sentry list includes any known near-Earth asteroids that have a non-zero probability of impacting Earth in the future.
There have been several objects in the past that have risen on the risk list and eventually dropped off as more data have come in. New observations may result in reassignment of this asteroid to 0 as more data come in.