NASA Shares Observations of Recently-Identified Near Earth Asteroid

Typically, asteroids — like the one depicted in this artist’s concept — originate from the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but a small population of near-Earth objects may also come from the Moon’s surface after being ejected into space by an impact.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

ASA 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 objects in the past that have reached this same rating 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. 

More information about asteroids, near-Earth objects, and planetary defense at NASA can be found here. 