Universe Today
Here's one less thing to worry about — or to look forward to: NASA has ruled out any chance that an asteroid called 2024 YR4 will hit the moon in 2032. Last year, the uncertainty surrounding the space rock's orbital path held out a slight chance of impact, but fresh observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope confirm that it'll be a miss.
Based on JWST's readings, which were collected on Feb. 18 and 26, experts from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory say they expect 2024 YR4 to zoom past the lunar surface at a distance of 13,200 miles on Dec. 22, 2032.
Previous analyses of 2024 YR4's orbital path were less precise, and had suggested that the asteroid had a 4.3% chance of lunar impact in 2032.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered in late 2024 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile. In early 2025, observations of the asteroid were uncertain enough that astronomers said there was a very slight chance that it could hit Earth. The Earth-impact scenario was ruled out relatively quickly, but the uncertainty surrounding a potential lunar impact lingered longer.
Since the spring of 2025, the asteroid's path through the solar system rendered it too faint to be observed until it was picked up last month on JWST's near-infrared camera.
It's not all that unusual for preliminary projections of a near-Earth asteroid's orbital path to be uncertain enough that there's a perceived potential for a cosmic collision. Further readings typically rule out impact: That was the case for an asteroid known as Apophis, which made a splash when it was discovered in 2004. Astronomers gave Apophis a slight chance of hitting Earth in 2029, or perhaps in 2036. Another round of observations in 2013 eliminated that possibility, and now the case of 2024 YR4 has come to a similar conclusion.
If 2024 YR4 were to hit the moon, how big would the blast be? Experts say the space rock is around 200 feet in diameter, or roughly the size of a 15-story building. Ed Lu, the former astronaut who’s in charge of the B612 Foundation’s Asteroid Institute, said last year that a rock that big could blast a 1.2-mile-wide crater on the moon.
“That’s a lot of material thrown up that will basically end up in orbit around the moon, or surrounding the moon,” Lu said at the time. “If it hits, you will be able to see that from the Earth with the naked eye. A pretty big explosion — it will throw a lot of stuff up. In fact, I will bet that there will be meteor showers on Earth.”
Corey S. Powell, co-editor in chief of OpenMind Magazine, suggested that today's news might come as a disappointment to those who had been looking forward to the fireworks. "Sorry, fans of big lunar explosions," he said in a post to Bluesky.
