The rock tour has officially been canceled.
After two months of observations, NASA scientists have officially declared Earth safe from “city killer” asteroid 2024 YR4.
On Tuesday, the space agency recently placed space rock’s impact probability at just 0.0017%, meaning it will almost certainly fly by our planet in 2032 and won’t threaten us in the next century, the AP reported.
“That’s the outcome we expected all along, although we couldn’t be 100% sure that it would happen,” Paul Chodas, the head of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Objects Studies, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency factored the odds even lower at 0.001%, essentially nil.
This marks a remarkable course correction given that just a week ago, the rock — which measures between 131 and 295 feet in diameter —had a 1.5% chance of hitting Earth, per the space agency.
At its highest point a day earlier, the impact risk factor clocked in at 1 in 32, or 3.1%, making YR4 the most dangerous asteroid since the inception of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) Sentry Risk Table over ten years ago.
This outcome is in line with scientist predictions stipulating that the odds would skyrocket before reversing back down to zero.
This is fortunate as a deep impact would release an energy blast equivalent to 8 megatons of TNT — roughly 500 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima — and could potentially threaten the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
While the Earth might be out of the woods, the moon could still be in the crosshairs, unfortunately.
NASA warned that our YR4 has a 1.7% chance of striking our natural satellite, marking a substantial increase from prior predictions.
Unlike the Earth, the moon lacks an atmosphere to protect it, so the impact would occur around 30,000 miles per hour and leave a blast crater measuring between 1,640 to 6,500 feet across.
Fortunately, Chodas claimed that the odds of a lunar crash-landing would likely fade as well.
Next month, scientists will use the James Webb Space Telescope — the world’s most powerful — to pinpoint YR4’s size before it disappears from view in a month or two.
In essence, this interstellar “close shave” — or at least the hint of one — has proven the best of both worlds for astronomers.
“While this asteroid no longer poses a significant impact hazard to Earth, 2024 YR4 provided an invaluable opportunity” for study, NASA said in a statement.