NASA analysis of a near-Earth asteroid, designated 2024 YR4, indicates it has a more than 1% chance of impacting Earth on Dec. 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 Dec. 27, 2024, to the Minor Planet Center– the international clearing house 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 Dec. 31, 2024. The Sentry list includes any known near-Earth asteroids that have a non-zero probability of impacting Earth in the future. An object that reaches this level is not uncommon ; there have been several obj...
Media Monitoring for Signals about Emerging Threats