NASA has confirmed that asteroid 2024 YR4 will not crash into the Moon in 2032, after new tracking data from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may have dominated attention last year, but many also remember the so-called ‘city-killer’ asteroid that once carried a small chance of striking the Moon within the next decade.
NASA has now clarified when the Statue of Liberty-sized object will make its nearest approach to our lunar neighbour.
Using observations collected on February 18 and 26, specialists at NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California were able to tighten the asteroid’s orbital calculations substantially.
Those refined figures indicate the asteroid will fly past the Moon on December 22, 2032, missing it by roughly 13,200 miles (21,200 km).
Earlier estimates had put the likelihood of a lunar impact at 4.3 percent. NASA emphasised that the asteroid’s route itself hasn’t shifted; rather, Webb’s measurements have reduced uncertainty about where the rock will be at that time.
With the updated modelling, scientists say there is now no chance of a Moon impact in 2032.
The James Webb Space Telescope was key to making those improved measurements possible.
Since spring 2025, 2024 YR4 has become too faint and too far away for many telescopes to keep tracking reliably.
To overcome that, a group led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory used Webb’s sensitive instruments to obtain some of the faintest asteroid detections ever achieved.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first detected in late 2024 by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile – the same network that first identified 3I/ATLAS.
After early 2025 trajectory work, researchers flagged a small but meaningful possibility that the asteroid could hit Earth in 2032.
Further observations from telescopes worldwide later allowed NASA to determine the object does not present a significant danger to Earth on December 22, 2032 – or at any time in the next 100 years.
NASA noted that it’s normal for impact odds to change as incoming data improves orbit forecasts.
☄️We're happy to announce that on Dec. 22, 2032, asteroid 2024 YR4 will sail by the Moon at a distance of 13,200 miles based on new data from @NASAWebb. Our Planetary Defense Program has tracked this potentially hazardous asteroid since late 2024. https://t.co/9DP3Cui5m3
— NASA Space Alerts (@NASASpaceAlerts) March 5, 2026
The roughly 90-metre-wide asteroid had previously been labelled a potential ‘city-killer’ because of the scale of destruction such an impact could cause if it ever struck Earth.
Even so, the newest calculations place it comfortably at a safe distance.
Although 2024 YR4 is no longer considered hazardous, NASA will continue monitoring near-Earth objects as part of its ongoing planetary defence work.
And as some concerned scientists have recently highlighted, no system is capable of tracking every object out there…