6.03.2026
This undated photo provided by NASA shows a view from orbit looking at the surface of the moon. (Ernie T. Wright/NASA via AP, File)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA issued a welcomed all-clear Thursday, saying there’s now zero chance that asteroid 2024 YR will crash into the moon in 2032.
The space agency had been predicting a 4.3% chance of a direct hit. But observations by the Webb Space Telescope in February helped scientists refine the asteroid’s orbit.
This new information indicates that the asteroid will miss the moon by 13,200 miles (21,200 kilometers) on Dec. 22, 2032.
Discovered at the end of 2024, the asteroid at first looked like it might threaten Earth.Scientists last year ruled out a collision with our planet anytime in the next century, but kept the moon as a possible target. The asteroid is about 200 feet (60 meters) across.
Quelle: AP
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New NASA Asteroid Observations Eliminate Chance of 2032 Lunar Impact
Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observations collected on Feb. 18 and 26, experts from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California have refined near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4’s orbit and are ruling out a chance of lunar impact on Dec. 22, 2032. With the new data, 2024 YR4 is expected to pass by the lunar surface at a distance of 13,200 miles (21,200 km).
This update reflects improved precision in our understanding of where the asteroid is expected to be in 2032 rather than a shift in its orbital path. Previous analyses, made before the incorporation of these new observations, suggested 2024 YR4 had a 4.3% chance of lunar impact on this date.
The observation team, led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, used Webb to capture the two additional observations of 2024 YR4 in an application of the telescope’s unique capabilities. Since spring of 2025, the asteroid has been unobservable from both Earth and space-based observatories except for this use of Webb to make among the faintest ever observations of an asteroid.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered in late 2024 by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System station in Chile. In early 2025, the information available about the asteroid’s trajectory indicated the asteroid had a small, but notable chance of impacting Earth. Over time with more observations collected by observatories around the world, NASA concluded the object poses no significant impact risk to Earth on Dec. 22, 2032, or through the next century. It’s typical to have initial observations and risk models updated once additional observational data is gathered and models are able to be refined.
Quelle: NASA
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Asteroid 2024 YR4 will not impact the Moon
Last year, an approximately 60 metre near-Earth object captured global attention. For a brief period, asteroid 2024 YR4 became the most dangerous asteroid discovered in the last 20 years. While an Earth impact was soon ruled out, the asteroid faded from view with a lingering 4% chance of striking the Moon on 22 December 2032.
Now, that risk has been eliminated. Astronomers have confirmed that 2024 YR4 will not impact the Moon using new observations made by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Instead, it will safely pass the Moon at a distance of more than 20 000 km.
As asteroid 2024 YR4 raced away from Earth and faded from view last spring, it was widely assumed that it would not be visible again until 2028. But an international team of astronomers identified two narrow opportunities in February 2026 in which they believed that Webb may be able to detect the faint speck against a sparse backdrop of stars whose positions are very well known thanks to the work of ESA’s Gaia mission.
The challenge was significant: to use one of the most complex machines humankind has ever built to track an almost invisible object many millions of kilometres away – and then accurately predict its position almost seven years into the future.
Webb was designed to study galaxies and other vast cosmic structures billions of light-years away. The telescope’s field of view is very small, and detecting one of the faintest asteroids ever targeted within it required extraordinary precision.
Careful planning and analysis of the observations were coordinated through a close collaboration between ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, and the Webb mission.
Despite the challenges, the observations were a success. By comparing 2024 YR4’s position relative to the background stars, the team was able to measure its orbit accurately enough to rule out a lunar impact in 2032.
Decades of engineering, international cooperation, and innovation in the fields of science, engineering and planetary defence culminated in the use of humankind’s most powerful robotic space telescope, built by many nations, to spot a distant speck of dust across the void and answer a question of universal importance to all the inhabitants of our planet.
The Moon is safe, 2024 YR4 poses no danger, but the work continues. The Planetary Defence team in ESA's Space Safety Programme continues to detect and track near-Earth objects to ensure that if a genuine danger ever emerges, we will not be caught unaware.
Find out more about these activities at the links below.
Quelle: ESA
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Update: 7.03.2026
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How NASA’s Webb Helped Rule Out Asteroid’s Chance of 2032 Lunar Impact
Editor’s Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. These results were reported as part of NASA’s role in the International Asteroid Warning Network.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently made new observations of the asteroid 2024 YR4, which we already knew poses no significant threat to Earth in 2032 and beyond. Webb’s new observations – among the faintest ever observations of an asteroid, in a challenging application of the telescope’s unique capabilities – helped determine that the asteroid also will safely pass the Moon in 2032.
We spoke with Andy Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and Julien de Wit of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, the two co-principal investigators of the Webb Director’s Discretionary Time program used to refine our knowledge of the asteroid’s orbit.
What is most important for people to know about these Webb observations?
We requested director’s discretionary time on Webb because there was a possibility for 2024 YR4 to impact the Moon in 2032. Without Webb, we would have needed to wait until 2028 with a large amount of uncertainty about what might happen, but with these observations that uncertainty is removed. Webb first constrained the asteroid’s size in 2025 and has now extended its observational arc to refine the orbit of 2024 YR4, demonstrating in practice how its sensitivity can support planetary-defense assessments for extremely faint objects long before they become observable again from Earth.
Why is Webb the only observatory that can measure the asteroid’s position prior to 2028?
2024 YR4 is exceedingly faint right now, reflecting about as much light as an almond at the distance of the Moon. It glows at a magnitude of about 30, which is 4 billion times fainter than the faintest star visible to the unaided eye. Webb is the only observatory that could hope to make these measurements, as it is the only one with the required sensitivity and stability combined with precise moving-target tracking needed to follow and study objects like this. This allowed Webb to make several hour-long exposures of 2024 YR4 without the asteroid moving even a pixel in any of them. No other observatory can make these measurements until 2028 during the asteroid’s next passage through the inner solar system.
How does the Webb data enable us to better predict 2024 YR4’s trajectory?
Two things help us do a better job of predicting the paths of asteroids: getting very accurate positions and increasing the amount of time over which they’ve been observed. These measurements of 2024 YR4 are very precise, and even more importantly extend the date of the most recent observations from May 2025 to late February 2026. This almost doubles the length of time the asteroid 2024 YR4 has been observed and allows orbital dynamicists to be very confident in predicting where it will be in 2032.
What have you learned?
With these observations, NASA has further refined the orbit of 2024 YR4 well enough to know it will miss the Moon in 2032, meaning a lunar impact will be one fewer thing for satellite operators — as well as astronauts — to worry about in the future. Also critically important, however, was the experience we gained using Webb to make these measurements. The extreme faintness of 2024 YR4 at the time of the measurements provided a challenge because it is difficult or impossible to get good images containing both something as faint as the asteroid and something as bright as some of the stars used to precisely measure its location on the sky. The excellent quality of Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) design and optics allowed us to develop techniques that worked wonders, however, and that gives us confidence that we can make such measurements again if necessary in the future, and we will not need to learn how to do it from scratch.
How do the Webb observations fit within the larger picture of the study of this asteroid (and other near-Earth asteroids)?
Webb observations of 2024 YR4 were critical for our understanding of that asteroid. Specifically, they helped to constrain the object’s size and its orbit. In a larger sense, these observations demonstrate the utility of Webb for planetary defense — its unique capabilities for measuring the position and physical properties of an object beyond the capabilities of any other facility. Webb provides a unique capability to support such assessments well before objects return to the inner solar system. If and when NASA’s planetary defense assets discover another potentially hazardous object of interest, we will know that we could make these measurements in practice, not just in theory, and we have gained important experience in designing and analyzing those measurements.
Looking at an even larger picture, Webb is not the only NASA Astrophysics mission with planetary defense applications. For example, NASA’s next flagship science mission, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will capture asteroids as it surveys the universe and could also help better constrain their orbits. And NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatorymission concept will have unprecedented sensitivity unlike any space telescope before it, a powerful potential tool to help with earlier orbit refinement. NASA is also developing the Near-Earth Object Surveyor, bringing NASA’s space telescope heritage directly to bear on the asteroid hazard and demonstrating the strong collaboration across NASA Science in meeting NASA’s planetary defense objectives.
About the Authors
Andy Rivkin, a planetary astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and Julien de Wit, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are co-principal investigators of the Webb Director’s Discretionary Time program (DD 9441) used to study asteroid 2024 YR4.
Quelle: NASA