NASA’s Webb telescope captures photos of Asteroid 2024 YR4, once a threat to Earth
This image provided by the European Space Agency on Wednesday, April 2, 2025, captured by NASA’s Webb telescope, shows the asteroid 2024 YR4. (European Space Agency via AP)
NASA's Webb Space Telescope has recently captured images of asteroid 2024 YR4, which earlier this year made headlines when it was listed as a potential threat to Earth.
NASA and the European Space Agency released the photos — showing the asteroid as a fuzzy dot — on Wednesday. Webb confirm the asteroid is nearly 200 feet (60 meters) across, or about the height of a 15-story building, according to the two space agencies, News.Az reports, citing AP.
It’s the smallest object ever observed by the observatory, the biggest and most powerful ever sent into space.
Discovered late last year, the asteroid 2024 YR4 was predicted at one point to have a 3% chance of smacking Earth in 2032. Additional observations prompted scientists to reduce the threat to virtually zero, where it remains. But there’s a slight chance it could hit the moon then. The asteroid swings our way every four years.
Johns Hopkins University astronomer Andrew Rivkin said the observations by Webb served as “invaluable” practice for other asteroids that may threaten us down the road. Ground telescopes also have tracked this particular space rock over the past few months.
All this “gives us a window to understand what other objects the size of 2024 YR4 are like, including the next one that might be heading our way,” Rivkin, who helped with the observations, said in a statement.
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