(NewsNation) — The odds that a potentially destructive asteroid will collide with Earth in 2032 have increased once again, NASA says, but the chance of an actual impact is still quite slim.
NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) first discovered the asteroid, named 2024 YR4, in December 2024, according to a blog post from the agency. The following month, the object was found to have an impact probability of more than 1% — a threshold that necessitates “formal notification” of the asteroid to U.S. government agencies and global organizations including United Nations and the International Asteroid Warning Network, NASA said.
“Currently, no other known large asteroids have an impact probability above 1%,” NASA wrote at the time.
In early February, NASA announced that the asteroid’s chances of hitting our planet grew to 2.3%. And most recently, on Feb. 18, the agency’s website listed a 3.1% chance (or around 1 in 32) that 2024 YR4 will impact Earth on Dec. 22, 2032.
YR4 is currently also rated a 3 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, which is a score based on an assessment of the “likelihood and consequences” of a potential impact. It was categorized as such due to its impact probability and its size, which has been estimated at between 130 to 300 feet wide.
A 3 on the Torino scale, specifically, denotes an object described as “a close encounter, meriting attention by astronomers. Current calculations give a 1% or greater chance of collision capable of localized destruction.”
NASA has noted that further observations could significantly change or lower the impact probability of the asteroid, perhaps to 0%.
“In the unlikely event that 2024 YR4 is on an impact trajectory, the impact would occur somewhere along a risk corridor which extends across the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in an earlier news release.
NASA said its James Webb Space Telescope will observe the asteroid in March 2025 “to better assess the asteroid’s size.”
A representative for NASA was not immediately available to discuss mitigation efforts, should they determine an asteroid to be on a collision course with Earth. In the recent past, however, NASA has seen success in changing the trajectory of a celestial object by intentionally slamming a spacecraft into one, like they did in 2022 when the agency’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) redirected the Dimorphos asteroid moonlet.
“The success of DART is helping to advance theoretical asteroid deflection models and enabling researchers to better understand how — and when — a kinetic impactor spacecraft could be used to deflect an Earth-bound asteroid,” NASA wrote of the program, while acknowledging that further research would be needed to deal with impending threats.