Asteroid 2024 YR4 is so big it's the size of a 10-story building and could impact the moon

NASA says asteroid 2024 YR4, the size of a 10-story building, now has a chance of crashing into the moon.

At the start of the year, word spread that a huge “city-destroying” asteroid was hurtling in the direction of Earth and could potentially strike our planet by 2032, causing significant damage.

Despite being millions of miles away, the space agency and other observers were watching it but subsequently, they downgraded the risk it posed to us on Earth to “near-zero”.

However, now it seems that the moon may now be in the line of impact. In a post on NASA’s website, the space agency revealed it has upped the impact probability.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 is so big it's the size of a 10-story building and could impact the moon iStock

Based on observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and other ground-based telescopes, the team at NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies “have updated 2024 YR4’s chance of impacting the Moon on Dec. 22, 2032 from 1.7% as of late February to 3.8%.”

On the positive side, they explained that the risk remains low and that it would not change the planet’s orbit.

“There is still a 96.2% chance that the asteroid will miss the Moon. In the small chance that the asteroid were to impact, it would not alter the Moon’s orbit,” NASA explained.

NASA said that after mid-April, the 2024 YR4 asteroid will be too far away and too faint to monitor using ground-based telescopes.

However, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to locate and observe it again in either late April or early May.

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