NASA Ups Its Odds of Massive Asteroid Hitting Earth

The odds are climbing higher than ever that a "city-killer" asteroid will hit Earth in 2032, according to NASA.

According to New Scientist Tuesday, the odds that the football-field-sized asteroid, dubbed "YR4 2024" after its discovery in December, is heading for a collision with Earth in 7 years is now 1-in-38, or 2.6%.

When the asteroid was first discovered, the odds of a strike were 1-in-83, but then has kept increasing to 1-in-67; 1-in-53, 1-in-43, and now the current figure.

Astronomers have been calculating the likelihood of the asteroid hitting Earth with greater precision as they gather more data. It is estimated as being anywhere from 131 feet to 295 feet wide, with the potential of releasing the energy equivalent to almost 8 megatons of TNT, or 500 times the power of the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II, if it and the Earth collide.

The European Space Agency's odds of YR4 hitting Earth are a little lower than NASA's, at about 2.4%.

The increasing odds don't really mean that the asteroid has become more likely to hit Earth, as they may come down, Hugh Lewis at the University of Southampton, UK, told New Scientist.

However, time is running out to forecast the asteroid's risk, as it will fly behind the sun in April, where it will be out of view of most telescopes on Earth, which will limit how much predictions can be refined, he said.

"Any observations we can make between now and when it's out of view will obviously help us to refine the orbit and to make better predictions," said Lewis. "That doesn't necessarily mean that it will go down before April. It could continue to go up, but still ultimately miss us."

NASA has designated the asteroid as a level three on its Torino Scale since late January, reports The New York Post.

The scale measures the danger of Near Earth Objects (NEOs), meaning it is being considered as being a large item with a "close encounter, meriting attention by astronomers" and boasts a "1% or greater chance of collision capable of localized destruction."

For now, YR4's projected trajectory puts it in line of eight of the most populated cities in the world, including Bogota, Colombia; Mumbai and Chennai, India; and Lagos, Nigeria, putting about 110 million people at risk.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is also warning about cutting science spending with the possibility that the city-killer asteroid could hit, reports The Post.

"At the moment, mansion-sized Asteroid 2024-YR4 has a one-in-fifty chance of hitting Earth in the next eight years. Now might be a bad time to reduce spending on Science. Just sayin'," Tyson said on X.

The National Science Foundation, an independent government agency and the nation's largest funder of scientific research has frozen its grant approval process and new spending following an executive order from President Donald Trump pausing all federal grants.

That order has been put on hold by a federal judge, but the NSF has not resumed its funding, after warnings in February that it should be ready to lose two-thirds of its funding and half of its staff.

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