ESA
Asteroide 2024 YR4
It’s official: after the most recent observations, NASA confirmed that asteroid 2024 YR4 will pass by the Moon. One less worry — or one less reason to wait.
Last year, uncertainty surrounding the orbital trajectory of asteroid 2024 YR4 left open a small hypothesis of . But new observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope confirm that won’t happen.
Based on JWST measurements collected on February 18 and 26, experts at NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies expect 2024 YR4 to become about 21,200 kilometers from the lunar surface, on December 22, 2032.
Previous analyzes of 2024 YR4’s orbital trajectory were less precise and suggested the asteroid had a probability of 4.3% of reaching the Moon in 2032 — with possible catastrophic consequences, which .
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered in late 2024 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile. As of early 2025, observations of the asteroid were still sufficiently uncertain for astronomers to admit a very remote possibility to reach Earth.
This Earth impact scenario was discarded relatively quicklybut the uncertainty surrounding a possible collision with the Moon lasted longer.
Since the spring of 2025, the asteroid’s trajectory through the Solar System has made it too faint to be observeduntil it was detected again last month by JWST’s near-infrared camera.
It is otherwise not so unusual for preliminary projections of the orbital trajectory of a near-Earth asteroid to be uncertain enough to fuel the perception of a potential cosmic shock.
As a general rule, subsequent observations end up excluding this risk. This is what happened to an asteroid known as Apophis, the “asteroid of chaos”, which caused people to talk when it was discovered in 2004.
At the time, astronomers attributed Apophis to reaching Earth in 2029, or perhaps in 2036. A new round of observations in 2013, and the case for 2024 YR4 have now reached a similar conclusion.
If 2024 YR4 hit the Moon, how big would the explosion be? Experts estimate that the asteroid is about 60 meters in diameterthe size of a 15-story building, explains the .
Ed Luformer astronaut and head of the Asteroid Institute of the B612 Foundation, said last year that a rock of this size could open a hole on the Moon crater measuring approximately 1.9 kilometers wide. “It would be a huge amount of projected material, which would basically end up in orbit around the Moon, or around the Moon.”
“If that happened, it would be visible from Earth. It would be a pretty big explosion, it would project a lot of material. In fact, I bet there would be meteor showers on Earth”.
Corey S. Powellco-editor-in-chief of OpenMind Magazine, suggested that the news that the chance of a collision with the Moon has been ruled out could be a disappointment for those looking forward to the show. “Sorry, fans of big lunar explosions”, in a post on Bluesky.
