Asteroid that sparked concerns no longer poses threat: NASA

An asteroid that sparked concerns about potentially hitting Earth no longer poses a significant threat of slamming into our planet, according to NASA's latest analysis.
The asteroid, Asteroid 2024 YR4, which was first spotted in late 2024, now has a 0.004 percent chance of hitting our planet and is 'expected to safely pass by Earth in 2032,' NASA said in the newest update that was published on Monday.
The 2024 YR4, first detected by telescopes on Dec. 27 last year, previously had a 'very small, but notable chance' of ramming into Earth in 2032.
With further observations, experts at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Center for Near-Earth Object Studies determined 'more precise models' of the asteroid's trajectory show 'there is no significant potential for this asteroid to impact our planet for the next century.'
'The latest observations have further reduced the uncertainty of its future trajectory, and the range of possible locations the asteroid could be on Dec. 22, 2032, has moved farther away from the Earth,' NASA said.
While Earth might not be in harm's way, our moon is not entirely in the clear, according to NASA. The space agency said there is currently a 1.7 percent chance the asteroid could 'impact' the Moon on Dec. 22, 2032.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will continue to examine the asteroid in March 'to further gain insights about its size for scientific purposes.'
The space agency added that despite the asteroid no longer being a 'significant impact hazard' to planet Earth, it was an 'invaluable opportunity for experts at NASA and its partner institutions to test planetary defense science and notification processes.'

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Yahoo

2 hours ago

• Yahoo

Regional students participate in University of Idaho's coding and robotics camp

Jun. 21—MOSCOW — It may not be a summer camp in the traditional sense, but the University of Idaho's summer Robotics Coding Camp is helping local students learn skills that can help them in the future. Regional middle and high school students spent a week on the Moscow campus learning about computer programming and engineering. The students typed and clicked away at their computers mastering skills many people don't learn until they are older. Erin Lanigan, UI assistant director of student engagement and STEM outreach, said one of the goals for the program is to help prepare students for entering the workforce where computer science and engineering skills are among the top needs. At this age, they are beginning to decide what they want to do when they grow up. "They have to see it to know they can be it," she said. Moscow Middle School student Corinne Bowersox, 12, already has a job in mind. "I'm actually interested in being a NASA engineer," she said. During this week's camp, she used coding to create her own video game where the goal is to catch fortune cookies and eggs before they hit the floor. She also learned how to control a small robot on wheels. She said coding is an easy way to learn a new hobby and people can share their work with other creators.

Forbes

3 hours ago

• Forbes

ESA's Solar Orbiter Should Solve Mystery Of Sun's Outermost Atmosphere

ESA's Solar Orbiter mission will face the Sun from within the orbit of Mercury at its closest ... More approach. The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter mission recently stunned the world with the first-ever full images of our Sun's South pole, proving that this was going to be a mission like no other. Using an orbital gravity assist from the planet Venus, the Solar Orbiter mission spacecraft was able to maneuver into an orbit that has taken it to an angle 17 degrees below the Sun's equator. Over the coming years, the spacecraft will tilt its orbit even further, so the best views are yet to come, says ESA. The 1.2-billion-euro Solar Orbiter mission, with NASA participation, should finally help us understand the origin of the Sun's solar winds as well as our understanding of the Sun's poles. And arguably most importantly, it should solve the puzzle of why our star's outermost atmosphere, or corona, is heated to millions of degrees Kelvin and is thus so much hotter than the Sun's own surface. By contrast, our Sun's visible photosphere, or surface, averages only 5,500 degrees K. With Solar Orbiter, we are clearly seeing energy releases on the nano-flare scale, Daniel Mueller, a solar physicist and ESA project scientist for both ESA's SOHO and Solar Orbiter missions to the Sun, tells me in his office in The Netherlands. But the question is, would these nano-flares continue like that infinitely, or is there a certain lower limit to the production of these nano-flares, Mueller wonders. The puzzle is whether these nano-flares are enough to heat up the Sun's corona to the temperatures with which it is routinely measured. A Unique View Launched in 2020, from its highly elliptical orbit just inside Mercury's perihelion, the closest point in our innermost planet's solar orbit, the ESA spacecraft offers the best views yet of our own yellow dwarf star. We can see on scales down to about 200 kilometers on the Sun, which shows us a lot of dynamics of our star, says Mueller. And thanks to its newly tilted orbit around the Sun, the European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft is the first to image the Sun's poles from outside the ecliptic plane (the imaginary geometric plane in which our Earth orbits the Sun), says ESA. We observed the Sun's North pole at the end of this past April, says Mueller. But we passed the Southern pole first and then the Northern pole six weeks later, he says. At the moment, as seen from Earth, the Solar Orbiter is almost behind the Sun, so the data downlink has slowed to a trickle. But by early October, Mueller expects to have downloaded all the data from Solar Orbiter's Spring polar observations of the Sun. And within a matter of two to three months after the data is on the ground, the first scientific results will have been written up and submitted to journals for publication, says Mueller. These observations are also key to understanding the Sun's magnetic field and why it flips roughly every 11 years, coinciding with a peak in solar activity, says ESA. The spacecraft's instruments show that the Sun's South pole is a bit of a magnetic mess now, with both North and South polarity magnetic fields present, ESA notes. Ready To Flip Right now, there is not a clear dominant magnetic polarity, but a mix of the two, says Mueller. And that is exactly what you would expect to find during the maximum of the Sun's activity cycle, when the magnetic field is about to flip, he says. The real applications are for space weather predictions. Case in point, better space weather forecasting may have saved many of Elon Musk's 523 Starlink satellites that reentered Earth's atmosphere between 2020 and 2024. This period coincides with the rising phase of solar cycle 25, which has shown itself to be more intense than the previous solar cycle, the authors of a 2025 paper appearing in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences write. Our results indisputably show that satellites reenter faster with higher geomagnetic activity, the authors note. There was a big solar storm that caused the earth's upper Earth atmosphere to expand, so, the satellites experienced more drag, and therefore didn't make it to orbit, says Mueller. One option may have been simply to hold off on launches until this increased period of solar activity enabled a less risky geomagnetic environment in Earth's upper atmosphere. The hope is that the Solar Orbiter mission and other missions like it will lead to better and more reliable space weather predictions that could potentially save hundreds of millions of dollars in the commercial satellite industry. Solar Orbiter should do its share in solving both pure solar physics conundrums as well as in more practical applications like space weather. The good news is that the spacecraft still has plenty of fuel left. Our current funding goes until the end of 2026, but because we had a picture-perfect launch provided by United Launch Alliance and NASA, we saved a lot of fuel, says Mueller. So, the onboard fuel reserves are so large that we can keep going for a long time, he says.

4 hours ago

NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company's lunar lander

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A NASA spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company's lunar lander. NASA released the pictures Friday, two weeks after ispace's lander slammed into the moon. The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon's far north. A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the scene last week. The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace. Company officials plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what doomed the latest mission, launched from Cape Canaveral in January. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.