The asteroid 2024 YR4, projected recently to have as much as a one-in-32 chance of striking Earth, is now expected to have just a one-in-37,000 shot of making impact on Dec. 22, 2032.

The projected chance of a collision between the space rock and Earth was increasing in the weeks after its Dec. 27, 2024, discovery. Last month, it was thought to have a 1.2% chance of hitting Earth on that date, increasing to a 2.3% shot on Feb. 7 and a 3.1% chance on Feb. 18.

That figure is the highest impact probability NASA has ever recorded for an object the size of 2024 YR4, but NASA scientists weren’t that worried about its possibility of hitting Earth.

“I knew this was likely to go away as we collected more data,” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory navigation engineer Davide Farnocchia told The New York Times.

On Feb. 19, its collision chance was bumped down to 1.5%. As more data from additional observations of the asteroid have come in, scientists downgraded 2024 YR4’s chance of hitting Earth to just 0.0027% as of Monday, according to the NASA JPL’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies.

“There is no significant potential for this asteroid to impact our planet for the next century,” NASA said in a release Monday.

The space rock still has a better than one-in-58 chance of hitting the moon on Dec. 22, 2032, with 1.7% collision probability, NASA said.

Work is ongoing to figure out how big 2024 YR4 is. It’s thought to be between 130 and 300 feet wide.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.