5 Jun 2025

While asteroid 2024 YR4 is currently too distant to detect with telescopes from Earth, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope collected one more observation of the asteroid before it escaped from view in its orbit around the Sun.  

With the additional data, experts from NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California further refined the asteroid’s orbit. The Webb data improved our knowledge of where the asteroid will be on Dec. 22, 2032, by nearly 20%. As result, the asteroid’s probability of impacting the Moon has slightly increased from 3.8% to 4.3%. In the small chance that the asteroid were to impact, it would not alter the Moon’s orbit.   

When asteroid 2024 YR4 was first discovered, the asteroid had a small chance of impacting Earth. After more observations, NASA concluded the object poses no significant impact risk to Earth in 2032 and beyond.  

As data comes in, it is normal for the impact probability to evolve. An international team led by Dr. Andy Rivkin from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, made the observations using Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera in May.  

Asteroid 2024 YR4 is now too far away to observe with either space or ground-based telescopes. NASA expects to make further observations when the asteroid’s orbit around the Sun brings it back into the vicinity of Earth in 2028.   

[Image]

The range of possible locations – represented by yellow points – of 2024 YR4 on Dec. 22, 2032. The range decreases from April to June as we gained more data and improved our certainty of the asteroid’s position. Earth is close to the center of the white circle, which represents the Moon’s orbital path.