Asteroid 2024 YR4 was only just discovered on Christmas Day last year, flying uncomfortably close to our planet, just 500,000 miles away. That’s roughly twice the distance of the Earth to the Moon, but it might get much closer next time.
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00:00Asteroid 2024 YR4 was only just discovered on Christmas Day last year, flying uncomfortably
00:10close to our planet, just 500,000 miles away.
00:13That's roughly twice the distance of the Earth to the Moon, but extremely close in
00:17cosmic terms.
00:18Now experts say in 2032 it may come even closer and has a slim chance of colliding with our
00:23planet.
00:24Asteroid 2024 YR4 is between 130 and 330 feet in diameter, so not world-ending, but
00:31certainly catastrophic if it were to hit a populated area.
00:34So how likely will it collide?
00:35Well head of NASA's Near Earth Object Studies says it's just over a 1% chance.
00:40The asteroid is currently moving away from us and experts anticipate further calculations
00:44may lower its impact risk to zero.
00:46They are also looking at old sky survey images in an attempt to find it within those, hoping
00:50to get better trajectory data to refine those predictions.
00:53Still, the European Space Agency ranks it the highest risk asteroid currently under
00:57observation.
00:58Experts say that if this asteroid made landfall, it would hit with the same explosive power
01:02of a 50 to 100 megaton nuclear weapon, rivaling the largest one humans have ever detonated.