Observations of the Near Earth Asteroid 2024 YR4 carried out with ESO’s Very Large Telescope in January 2025
ESO/O. Hainaut et al.
An asteroid as much as 100 metres large has a 1-in-83 chance of impacting Earth on 22 December 2032. That threat of influence is sufficient to have triggered international planetary defence response procedures for the primary time.
“This is a historic moment,” says Richard Moissl on the European Space Agency (ESA).
The asteroid, dubbed 2024 YR4, was first detected on 27 December 2024 by an automatic telescope…