NASA Confirms Moon and Earth Safe from Asteroid 2024 YR4 Threat
NASA has officially dismissed all possibilities concerning the potential impact of asteroid 2024 YR4 on the Moon in 2032. Although last year the uncertainty regarding the orbital path of this space rock briefly raised a small chance of collision, latest observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) confirm that the asteroid will simply pass by.
Based on JWST data collected on 18 and 26 February, experts from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have predicted that asteroid 2024 YR4 will speed past the Moon’s surface at a distance of 13,200 miles on 22 December 2032.
This monitoring effort proved crucial given that earlier analysis of 2024 YR4’s orbital path was less precise and had shown a 4.3 per cent probability of impacting the Moon.
The asteroid was first discovered in late 2024 by the ATLAS system in Chile. In early 2025, observations of the object remained highly uncertain, prompting astronomers to state there was a small possibility the asteroid could impact Earth.
The scenario of impact with Earth was relatively quickly ruled out, but uncertainty regarding the potential lunar impact persisted longer. Since spring 2025, the asteroid’s path through the solar system made it too dim to observe, until it was finally detected again last month by JWST’s near-infrared camera.
The phenomenon of preliminary projections showing potential cosmic collision is not unusual in observations of near-Earth asteroids. A similar case occurred with asteroid Apophis, which caused alarm when discovered in 2004. At that time, Apophis was thought to have a small chance of impacting Earth in 2029 or 2036, but a series of follow-up observations in 2013 ultimately eliminated that possibility. Now, the case of asteroid 2024 YR4 ends with a similar conclusion, bringing relief to celestial observers.
Had asteroid 2024 YR4 actually impacted the Moon, the damage would have been estimated as extremely massive. With a diameter of approximately 200 feet or equivalent to a 15-storey building, Ed Lu, a former astronaut who leads the Asteroid Institute at the B612 Foundation, stated that a rock of that size would be capable of creating a crater approximately 1.2 miles wide on the lunar surface.
“That is a large amount of material that is thrown upwards which would basically end up in orbit around the Moon, or circling the Moon. If it hit, you would be able to see it from Earth with the naked eye. A fairly large explosion would throw a lot of material upwards. In fact, I would wager there would be a meteor shower on Earth.”