Well, it looks like we can all breathe a tiny sigh of relief—NASA has downgraded the odds of asteroid 2024 YR4 slamming into Earth from 2.6% to 1.5%. That’s right, folks, we went from “unlikely” to “slightly less unlikely,” but don’t worry, the space agencies are already busy scheming up ways to blow it to smithereens just in case. Because if there’s one thing governments love to do, it’s spending billions of dollars on worst-case-scenario planning for an event that will almost certainly never happen.
Now, to be fair, I’m all for a good planetary defense plan. If there were a killer asteroid headed our way, I’d rather we figure out a way to nuke it into space dust than hold a candlelight vigil for humanity. But let’s be honest: the media is eating this up like it’s the next Hollywood disaster movie because what better way to keep people glued to the news than yet another apocalyptic scenario? First, it was climate change, then it was COVID, then World War III, and now—space rock doom.
New observations of asteroid 2024 YR4 helped us update its chance of impact in 2032. The current probability is 1.5%.
Our understanding of the asteroid’s path improves with every observation. We’ll keep you posted. https://t.co/LuRwg1eaCv pic.twitter.com/SfZIxflB95
— NASA (@NASA) February 20, 2025
So, what are we actually dealing with here? The asteroid in question is somewhere between 130 and 300 feet wide—basically, the size of the Statue of Liberty. If, by some freak chance, it were to hit Earth in December 2032, the estimated “death zone” would affect up to 110 million people. That’s a scary number, sure, but let’s put this in perspective: the asteroid would be traveling at 38,000 mph and is most likely to splash down in the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, or some remote area of Africa or South Asia. In other words, the odds of it wiping out an actual major city are incredibly low.
“No one is panicking, but it [is] definitely what we’re talking about in the hallways of NASA,” a manager at the Kennedy Space Center told the New York Post. “We know we have enough time to act, but now’s the time to start planning. You can’t half-a– this at the last minute.”
But that’s not stopping NASA and the European Space Agency from making this their new obsession. They’re already prepping to observe the asteroid in March before it disappears from view for a few years. Because, you know, we wouldn’t want to lose sight of something that almost certainly isn’t going to hit us. The panic dial isn’t quite at full blast, but you can tell they’re itching to get there.
Of course, this asteroid is only rated a 3 on the 10-point asteroid hazard scale, which is the second-highest rating since 2004, when an asteroid called Apophis briefly scared scientists before they realized it would miss us in 2029. In other words, we’ve been here before, and—surprise—we survived. But that won’t stop the doomsday chatter.
Should we keep an eye on it? Sure. Should we be dumping endless government resources into “just in case” scenarios when we already have a military, an economy, and a border to fix? Probably not. But hey, if NASA wants to use this as an excuse to test out some asteroid-blasting tech, I say go for it. Just don’t expect the rest of us to lose sleep over it.
