The Earth chapter of the 2024 YR4 watch has changed dramatically. ESA’s newest estimate puts the chance of a 2032 Earth impact at 0.001%, low enough to return the asteroid to Level 0 on the Torino Scale. The international observing campaign worked exactly as intended: more data narrowed the route until Earth slipped out of the meaningful possibilities.
There is, however, a fresh wrinkle. NASA calculates a 1.7% chance that YR4 could strike the Moon on the same December 22, 2032 encounter. That is about 1 chance in 59, so a lunar miss remains by far the likelier result—but the Moon now sits inside a small part of the asteroid’s uncertainty region.
This would not knock the Moon out of orbit or send it tumbling toward Earth. It would be a natural crater-making event, the sort that built the Moon’s battered face over billions of years, observed with modern instruments and years of warning. For now, it is another geometry problem for astronomers to refine—and an unexpectedly exciting second act for a small rock we met only two months ago.