The risk of asteroid 2024 YR4 colliding with Earth in 2032 has been updated to 1 in 43. However, the scientific community is not worried about it.
The development was anticipated by specialists as the asteroid occupies the first place in the Sentry ranking, which is none other than the risk scale established by the Near-Earth Object Coordination Center. According to astronomers, the probability will drop drastically in the coming months when new orbital data is collected.
An exaggerated fear, scientists reassure
Astronomer David Rankin was the first to spot the asteroid in the Catalina Sky Survey archives before its official discovery. To do this, the scientist used the “precovered” method (rediscovering an object in archival data prior to its official discovery).
When the asteroid was first published, the impact risk was 1 in 83. While the new figure is alarming on paper, it needs to be read another way. The first calculation gave a 1.2% impact risk, or a 98.8% chance that the asteroid would miss our planet. The new estimate of 1 in 43 corresponds to a 2.3% impact risk. So there is a 97.7% chance of avoidance.
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“The chances of an impact have not doubled, it is the probability of an avoidance which remains almost identical,” underlines David Rankin, who has been following the asteroid since its detection in December 2024. Its diameter is estimated at around 60 meters and the object but its exact position in this orbit is difficult to determine.
“We understand the plane on which the asteroid is moving, but its exact position remains uncertain,” says the researcher, who speaks of a “line of variation” along which the object may be located. The center of this distribution of the asteroid passes close to the Earth, which explains why each update of the calculations slightly modifies the probabilities. But rest assured: the most likely scenario remains an avoidance.
To show that the phenomenon is complex, David Rankin makes an analogy: “Imagine that you are holding a stick a few dozen centimeters long. If you move it a millimeter in your hand, the other end hardly moves. Now, take this same stick and stretch it out over several million kilometers. The smallest movement at one end will cause enormous variations at the other end.”
The metaphor thus shows how small inaccuracies in telescope measurements, both timing and position errors, have major repercussions on long-term trajectory calculations. “No telescope can provide an absolutely perfect measurement,” recalls David Rankin.
Now, scientists are modeling the set of possible orbits that fit current observations. The goal is to create a static distribution that evolves and refines as the observation arc expands with new data. To illustrate this concept, Rankin presented graphs that show the evolution of another recently discovered asteroid: 2025 B09.
The uncertainty comes mainly from the difficulty in determining precisely the aphelion distance, the farthest point from the Sun, for a recently discovered asteroid. The visualizations show that while the orbital plane is well understood, the exact position along this plane remains unclear. “This is a general rule: asteroids observed over a single apparition, usually only a few months, have a high uncertainty,” explains David Rankin.
Observing the asteroid is complicated because it is currently moving away from Earth. But David Rankin’s team will continue its monitoring in February 2025 with the powerful 8-meter telescopes of the Catalina Sky Survey. “When we can extend the observations to a new appearance after a revolution around the Sun, or thanks to archival data, the uncertainty drops drastically,” says the researcher.
In parallel, teams around the world are analyzing archives from 2016, the last period when the asteroid was visible from Earth.
“A single observation in this data would be enough to definitively confirm or rule out the risk of an impact in 2032 ,” notes David Rankin. “Otherwise, even if February does not give us absolute certainty about the trajectory of 2024 YR4, we should have a definitive answer by 2028, the next period of visibility.”
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Source: Space
