Scientists have issued an update on a newly-discovered asteroid and its chances of hitting Earth. After two months of observations, scientists have almost fully ruled out any threat from the asteroid 2024 YR4, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday.
At one point, the odds of a strike in 2032 were as high as about 3 per cent and topped the world's asteroid-risk lists. The ESA has since lowered the odds to 0.001%. NASA had it down to 0.0027% - meaning the asteroid will almost certainly safely pass Earth in 2032 and there is no threat of impact for the next century.
But there is still a 1.7% chance that the asteroid could hit the moon on December 22 2032, according to Nasa. The world's telescopes will continue to track the asteroid as it heads away from Earth, with the Webb Space Telescope zooming in next month to pinpoint its size.
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It is expected to vanish from view in another month or two. Discovered in December, the asteroid is an estimated 40 metres to 90 metres across, and swings towards Earth every four years.
"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.
Bruce Betts, chief scientist of The Planetary Society, told AFP at the weekend: "If you put it over Paris or London or New York, you basically wipe out the whole city and some of the environs."
Some astronomers have previously described it as a 'city killer' and say it could detonate with hundreds of times the force of the Hiroshima bomb. It has been compared to the Tunguska strike, which flatted hundreds of square miles of trees when it an asteroid exploded in the atmosphere 100 years ago.