According to NASA, there is a greater chance that an asteroid, large enough to wipe out a city, will collide with Earth in seven years.
However, the real possibility of impact is still quite slim.
NASA first discovered the 130-300-foot asteroid in December 2024, the 2024 YR4, but there is only about 1% chance that NewsNation's trajectory in Los Angeles could affect Earth. got it. Reported by affiliate KTLA.
On January 27th, the asteroid exceeded the chances of hitting Earth, a “critical threshold,” by 1%, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Now, no other known large asteroids have an impact probability of more than 1%,” NASA said. press release.
On February 7th, the chances that asteroids will hit our planet grew to 2.3%, and as of February 18th, 3.1% chance YR4 2024 means it will affect the Earth on December 22nd, 2032. This means that the odds are one in 32.
There is a 96.9% chance that asteroids will miss Earth, but NASA says there is currently a major risk to this rare asteroid, rating it on the Turin Scale 3, a ranking of potential impacts.
“In the unlikely event of the 2024 YR4 on a shock trajectory, the shock occurs somewhere along the risk corridors that span the South Pacific, South America, Atlantic, Africa, the Arabian Sea and South Asia. ” JPL said in the release.
NASA said James Webb's Space Telescope will “evaluate the size of the asteroid” in March 2025 to observe the asteroid.
