An asteroid, which was considered the most dangerous found in the last two decades, no longer poses a risk of collision with the Earth or the Moonaccording to an update released by ESA (European Space Agency), last Thursday (5).
The object, identified as Asteroid 2024 YR4, has already been detected.
Initially, there was concern about a possible future impact, but the possibility of collision with the planet was quickly ruled out.
Even so, ESA studies indicated a probability of around 4%. New observations carried out with the also eliminated this scenario.
The data was obtained using the NIRCam infrared camera, which allowed the asteroid to be detected even after it had moved away from Earth and become practically invisible to most observatories. To the Measurements showed that the celestial body will pass more than 20 thousand kilometers away from the Moon, ruling out any possibility of collision.
The operation involved an international collaboration between ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Center, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies and the Webb telescope mission. Scientists compared the asteroid’s position with background stars cataloged by the Gaia mission to accurately calculate its orbit.
The challenge was to locate an extremely faint object millions of kilometers away within the limited field of view of the telescope, designed primarily to study galaxies billions of light years away.
According to ESA, the case demonstrates the advancement of planetary defense initiatives, which monitor objects close to Earth to identify risks in advance. Although asteroid 2024 YR4 does not pose a threat, monitoring of celestial bodies continues to avoid surprises in the future.
