Um, the Odds of That Asteroid Hitting Us in 2032 Have Doubled

Hey, so, remember how last week I wrote about how one astronomer thinks that we might have to nuke Asteroid 2024 YR4, the 100m x 40m rock out in space that’s on course to hit us in the year 2032? Well, it seems like the chances of it hitting Earth just increased.

The odds didn’t increase significantly, but enough to be worrisome. When we first discovered 2024 YR4, it had an estimated 1 in 83 chance of directly hitting the earth. By the time I got around to reporting about it, the chances had increased to 1 in 67. The latest update upped the odds even more.

As of this writing, there is a 1 in 43 chance the asteroid will hit us. That equates to a 2.3 percent chance of hitting Earth on December 22, 2032, which means it hits Earth in 23 out of 1,000 simulations.

Still, even with its increased chances of making contact, astronomers expect the rock to safely sail by Earth. It will be a close shave, though, as it would come within 240,000 km of us, which is around 149,129 miles.

Sounds like a lot, but in celestial terms, that’s nothing. For perspective, that’s well within the Moon’s orbit, which is around 238,900 miles away from the Earth. While it’s considered extremely close, it hasn’t reached “dangerously” close territory just yet. We’re still safe, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) initially ranked the asteroid as a level 3 threat on the Torino scale, meaning that it should be monitored but doesn’t require any immediate action like, say, nuking it back to God.

Asteroid orbits can be difficult to predict and can be affected by the gravitational forces from nearby space stuff, so all of this is subject to change.

Let’s say the worst-case scenario plays out and it does hit Earth. It’s a fairly small asteroid, so it wouldn’t cause an extinction-level event, but a 196-foot rock smashing into a populated area would still cause some pretty gnarly damage. The scale of that damage is currently difficult to gauge since all of this exists in the realm of the hypothetical, for now.

The threat posed by asteroid 2024 YR4 is big enough that the European Space Agency has been granted permission to use the powerful James Webb telescope to better understand our potential enemy.