Asteroid 2024 YR4, it appeared, was heading for Earth but more data recorded by the Webb Space Telescope has offered new information about the rocky body in the inner Solar System
The asteroid which caused panic about potentially colliding with Earth is the size of a building, Nasa has found.
When it was found late last year, initial observations showed the asteroid 2024 YR4 could have a three per cent chance of hitting Earth. This caused global concern but now fresh information has come to light after the Webb Space Telescope analysed new data about the rocky body.
While it highlights the asteroid is the size of a large building, scientists now believe its threat is virtually zero. There is, however, now a slight chance it could collide with the moon instead.
New photographs released this week show the asteroid as a fuzzy dot in the Solar System. Webb confirmed the asteroid is nearly 200ft (60 metres) across, or about the height of a 15-storey building, according to the two space agencies.
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The asteroid swings our way every four years. It is the smallest object ever observed by the observatory, the biggest and most powerful ever sent into space.
Johns Hopkins University astronomer Andrew Rivkin said the observations by Webb served as “invaluable” practice for other asteroids that may threaten us down the road.
Ground telescopes have also tracked this particular space rock over the past few months. All this “gives us a window to understand what other objects the size of 2024 YR4 are like, including the next one that might be heading our way”, Mr Rivkin, who helped with the observations, said in a statement.
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Earlier this year, the Mirror reported the asteroid 2024 YR4 was moving in the opposite direction to our planet from its perch in the crab-shaped Constellation of Cancer. But NASA anticipated the wide chunk of rock would change course in the next few years and arrive back in the Earth’s range by 2032, potentially hitting the planet and triggering an explosion akin to 500 atomic bombs.
NASA has repeatedly reappraised the probability rate assigned to YR4’s chances of making planetfall within the next seven years, and until yesterday the rate was set at 2.6 percent – 0.1 percent below the highest in history. Less than a day after that rate was raised, however, the space agency has raised it once more, making it now the most likely recorded asteroid to hit the Earth.
The rate places its risk of collision above Asteroid 99942 Apophis, the “God of Chaos”, discovered in 2004 that was given a 2.7 percent chance of hitting Earth by 2029. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) officially raised the risk of collision in 2032 by 0.5 percent overnight to 3.1 percent.