The Nepal Weekly 
February 25, 2025
Time to breathe a sigh of relief. The asteroid that once posed the greatest impact risk to Earth in recorded history now has an effective 0% chance of striking our planet. The probability of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth was reduced to zero thanks to new data collected on Sunday, Feb. 23.
“Asteroid 2024 YR4 has now been reassigned to Torino Scale Level Zero, the level for ‘No Hazard’ as additional tracking of its orbital path has reduced its possibility of intersecting the Earth to below the 1-in-1000 threshold.”
Discovered in Dec. 2024, 2024 YR4 quickly reached the top of NASA’s Sentry Risk table, at one point having a 1 in 32 chance of hitting Earth. This elevated it to Level 3 on the Torino scale, a system used since 1999 to categorize potential Earth impact events.
According to the NASA JPL Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) the 2024 YR4 impact probability has gone down to 0.00005 (0.005%) or 1-in-20,000 for its passage by Earth in 2032,” Richard Binzel, Professor of Planetary Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and creator of the Torino scale exclusively announced. “That’s impact probability zero folks! “
This conforms to the second part of the Torino scale level 3 description, which states: “Most likely, new telescopic observations will lead to re-assignment to Level 0. Attention by public and by public officials is merited if the encounter is less than a decade away.”
As 2024 YR4 has continued to merit attention from news media across the globe, Space.com has been consulting with asteroid hunter David Rankin of the Catalina Sky Survey, who found images of the space rock in archival data that was gathered prior to its official discovery.
From the outset, Rankin anticipated that 2024 YR4’s impact odds would initially rise before dropping dramatically. He explained where this uncertainty originates when tracking an asteroid’s trajectory.
“Imagine holding a stick that is a few feet long. If you move the stick in your hand a fraction of an inch, you hardly notice any movement on the other end,” Rankin said. “Now imagine that stick is many millions of miles long. Moving your hand a fraction of an inch will cause dramatic changes on the other end.”
