Asteroid 2024 YR4 Monitoring Chances Of Earth Impact | NASA's Planetary Defense Teams

 

From NASA - Molly L Wasser

Now that skies are darker after a week of limited visibility around full moon, astronomers have resumed observations of asteroid 2024 YR4. Ground-based telescopes require dark skies to observe asteroids, which are often very faint. Around the time of a full moon, the sky becomes too bright to detect these faint points of light.

NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has incorporated the new observations reported to the Minor Planet Center and on Feb. 18, updated the impact probability of asteroid 2024 YR4 in 2032 to 3.1%. This is the highest impact probability NASA has ever recorded for an object of this size or larger. However, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, new data collected overnight reduced the impact probability to 1.5%.

Each additional night of observations improves our understanding of where the asteroid could be on Dec. 22, 2032 and underlines the importance of gathering enough data so that our planetary defense experts can determine future risk to the Earth. NASA expects the impact probability to continue to evolve as new observations of asteroid 2024 YR4 are made over the coming days and weeks.

These recent observations have further constrained the uncertainty around the asteroid’s trajectory, and the yellow dots in the above graphic represent possible locations of the asteroid on Dec. 22, 2032. As we continue to observe the asteroid’s motion over time, the region of possible locations will shrink even further. For the impact probability to drop to zero, the Earth would need to fall outside of the range of potential locations of asteroid 2024 YR4 on Dec. 22, 2032.

Additionally, there is also a – much lower — chance this asteroid could impact the Moon. Current calculations estimate this impact probability to be 0.8%.

NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission, set to launch no earlier than Sept. 2027, will accelerate NASA’s ability to discover unknown asteroids by hunting for them in the infrared. While dark in visible light, asteroids and comets glow in the infrared as they’re heated by sunlight. In addition, NEO Surveyor will add an in-space vantage point that complements ground-based observatories.

Observations made overnight on Feb. 19 – 20 of asteroid 2024 YR4 have further decreased its chance of Earth impact on Dec. 22, 2032, to 0.28%. NASA’s planetary defense teams will continue to monitor the asteroid to improve our predictions of the asteroid’s trajectory. With this new data, the chance of an impact with the Moon increased slightly to 1%. The latest data will continue to be available at NASA JPL’s automated Sentry page.

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