In 2024 we feared that the asteroid YR4 would impact the Earth. Now NASA believes the Moon is threatened

For a few weeks at the beginning of 2025, the name 2024 YR4 became an absolute protagonist among the main institutions around the planet. It was no wonder, since this object, with an estimated size between 40 and 60 metersreached the level 3 on the Torino scalea milestone that we have not seen for a long time and that implies a probability of collision greater than 1% with the capacity to produce devastating local damage.

We are saved. After this fear, science has managed to reach the conclusion that the Earth is safe now. However, the story of 2024 YR4 is not over, since the latest models suggest that, although it will avoid us, there is a non-negligible probability that it will end up crashing into the Moon.

How we knew. Initially, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) held his breath in early 2025. The first observations showed a worrying scenario for the year 2032 with this possible impact, but the moment more attention began to be paid to this object it was seen that it was not going to end up on Earth.

The key to being able to breathe a little calmer again lies in the ‘shoulders’ of the James Webb which began making observations in May 2025. The space telescope made it possible to refine the asteroid’s orbit with a 20% precision improvement, confirming that there is no risk of impact against our planetnor an orbital alteration of the Moon that could affect us secondarily. But by closing a door, the JWST opened a fascinating and destructive window: the probability that 2024 YR4 will impact the Moon has risen from 3.8% to 4.3%.

The lunar judgment. According to studies recently published on arXiv, the key date is December 22, 2032. That day is where there is about a 1 in 23 chance that we will see a violent spectacle on the lunar surface with an impact that would release an energy of 6.5 megatons of TNT.

This is something very relevant, since this great energy would generate a crater approximately one kilometer in diameter and the ejection of 100 million kilos of lunar debris with a cloud of material equivalent to the weight of about 20,000 elephants.

From Earth. Logically, this impact, although it does not occur on the planet, the truth is that it will have important consequences and not exactly physical ones, but rather a visual phenomenon. The debris that will be ejected from the Moon could enter the Earth’s atmosphere some time later, generating an unprecedented meteor shower caused by a secondary impact.

The use of technology. Over time, the European Space Agency has also validated this data, placing the size of the object more specifically between 53 and 67 meters and confirming the 4% probability of having an impact on the moon. Although logically we also have a 96% chance that it will completely pass from the Moon.

But this asteroid has had a very positive point: it has vindicated the need to improve space detection tools. And right now these objects are hiding in the “blind spot” of the sun’s glare, although with this one we were lucky that the ATLAS system in Chile managed to detect it.

A future mission. Given this limitation that we have, the ESA has seen it necessary to activate the NEOMIR missionsince if it had already been active, it would have detected the asteroid a month earlier, offering vital reaction time if the threat had been against the Earth and not against the Moon.

And now what. For now, we have to wait. The asteroid has moved away in this case and will not be in an optimal position to make an observation again until 2028. It will be then that astronomers will be able to refine this 4.3% probability and tell us definitively whether we will spend Christmas 2032 looking at the Moon to see how a new crater forms live.

Images | Mike Petrucci NASA Hubble Space Telescope

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