THE enormous asteroid that scientists initially feared could strike Earth is now on course to potentially crash into the Moon.
Asteroid 2024 YR4, once dubbed a “city killer”, has an alarmingly high 1-in-26 chance of smashing into the lunar satellite, according to NASA’s latest chilling update.
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The space rock, first detected in December 2024, caused global concern after scientists reported it had an alarming 1-in-32 chance of smashing into Earth in 2032.
But as this possibility was being assessed, another troubling report surfaced at the end of February – the asteroid’s potential impact on the Moon.
The good news is that we know the asteroid has a very low chance of striking the Earth after NASA’s update in late February.
But concerningly, the latest calculations of the odds of it striking the Moon on December 22, 2032 continue to rise.
They jumped from a 1-in-59 chance in late February to a 1-in-26 chance in early April, based on observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
And the asteroid is even bigger than it was initially calculated, according to a recent NASA update.
JWST observations suggest that it measures between 174-220 feet in diameter – roughly the size of a 10-story building.
This is a jump from its previous size estimate of 131-295 feet.
“At this writing, a 2032 impact with the Moon has not been ruled out,” wrote lead author Andy Rivkin from Johns Hopkins University in a new study.
NASA reassured that although the probability remains low – at over 96 per cent chance of a miss – the scenario is under close observation.
The next opportunity for close tracking will be in early 2026, experts said.
If the asteroid collides with the Moon, Earth will reportedly be largely unaffected.
“There is the possibility this would eject some material back out that could hit the Earth, but I highly doubt it would cause any major threat,” David Rankin, operations engineer for the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey, told the New Scientist in February.
But he added that the collision would likely be “very visible” from Earth.
The most detailed images of asteroid 2024 YR4 were captured by a space telescope in Chile on February 7.
They were taken through the lens of the Gemini South Telescope – a powerful, 26-foot device in the Andes that specialises in staring deep into space.
Bryce Bolin, a NASA astronomer involved in the photo operation, told Space.com: “Only a few asteroids have been studied like this.”
This comes after February’s reports that the rock would pass nearby Earth in four years’ time, but not close enough to cause alarm, when scientists will have another chance to gather data on it.
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It was reported that it will loop around again in just under eight years, and this is when – on December 22, 2032 – it could crash into the Earth.
Most alarmingly, scientists had said that if YR4 were to hit the Earth, the collision would be powerful enough to destroy an entire city.
If YR4 – then estimated to be between 130 and 300 feet wide – did strike Earth, it would blow a 1.2 mile-across crater into the crust, scientists estimated.
It comes as Luca Conversi, an ESA scientist, recently told The Sun there is “a chance that something the size of YR4 is approaching, but we just haven’t detected it”.
This is how the last major asteroid to hit earth slipped through through the net.
It went “completely undetected, because it came from the direction of the Sun”, Luca explained.
He is referring to the Chelyabinsk meteor, an asteroid which scorched through earth’s atmosphere in 2013 and smashed through the icy plains of southern Russia.
Luca said: “It didn’t hit anything – but it triggered a sonic boom which shattered all the windows in the nearby town Chelyabinsk.
“Hundreds of people who were watching through windows in their homes were injured by the shattering glass.”
Nasa’s Torino Impact Hazard Scale
Explained by Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor at The Sun
Nasa uses something called the Torino Impact Hazard Scale to rate asteroids and other objects.
The scale goes from zero to 10.
Zero – also known as white zone – is defined as: “The likelihood of a collision is zero, or is so low as to be effectively zero. Also applies to small objects such as meteors and bodies that burn up in the atmosphere as well as infrequent meteorite falls that rarely cause damage.”
At the top end of the scale is 10, which states: “A collision is certain, capable of causing global climatic catastrophe that may threaten the future of civilization as we know it, whether impacting land or ocean. Such events occur on average once per 100,000 years, or less often.”
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