Earth is safe from the 'city-destroying' asteroid but our celestial neighbour could be hit

Earth might be out of the woods but asteroid 2024 YR4 could still hit the Moon.

After weeks of careful observation, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed this week that the space rock roughly the size of a football pitch no longer poses a threat to our home planet.

Many people started making doomsday plans when news came to light that an asteroid was hurtling in the direction of Earth. Named 2024 YR4, it was first detected by telescopes on December 27, 2024 and was estimated to be 131 to 295 feet (40 to 90 metres) wide.

It quickly rose to the top of NASA’s Sentry Risk table and at one point had a one in 32 chance of Earth. Experts warned that the asteroid could impact somewhere across the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, or South Asia.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 was predicted to hit Earth in 2032 buradaki, iStock

NASA once feared the chances of the asteroid making impact could rise past 20 per cent. Last week, the space agency increased the impact odds of the space rock hitting Earth in December 2032 to 3.1 per cent or a one-in-32 chance, The Telegraph reports.

The latest observations show that 2024 YR4 is no longer a threat to Earth, although the chance of it hitting the Moon has now risen to one in 55 (1.8 per cent chance). This number is expecting to grow in the coming weeks.

“There still remains a very small chance for asteroid 2024 YR4 to impact the Moon,” a NASA spokesperson said.

“When first discovered, asteroid 2024 YR4 had a very small, but notable chance of impacting our planet in 2032.

“As observations of the asteroid continued to be submitted … experts at Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s centre for near-earth object studies were able to calculate more precise models of the asteroid’s trajectory and now have found there is no significant potential for this asteroid to impact our planet for the next century.”

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