Visualizing 2024 YR4 Impact Risk
A small percentage of the possible variations of 2024 YR4 will impact the Earth. Here you can see what is described as the risk corridor crossing multiple continents and oceans. Individual locations only represent a subset of the possible impacting trajectories. An impact may occur anywhere along the line traced by these individual points.
This is the full simulation of 10,000 possible variations of 2024 YR4 around the time of a possible 2032 impact. You can see how the Earth only intersects a small percentage of the posssible trajectories. See also how variants that do not impact but come close to Earth have their orbits significantly altered.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is 2024 YR4?
2024 YR4 is an asteroid discovered in 2024 that has a small chance of impacting Earth in 2032. It's currently being closely monitored by astronomers worldwide.
How big is the asteroid?
The asteroid is estimated to be approximately 40-90 meters in diameter, though this estimate may be refined as more observations are made.
What is a risk corridor?
A risk corridor is the path along Earth's surface where an asteroid might impact if it were to hit our planet. Due to uncertainties in the asteroid's exact trajectory, the potential impact point can be anywhere along this corridor.
What are the chances of impact?
The impact probability changes daily as more observations are made and the orbit is refined. As of 2025-02-20, the impact probability is estimated to be around 0.260%, or 1 in 384. This is much lower than the peak probability of 1 in 32.
Why is the exact trajectory of the asteroid so uncertain?
The position and direction is determined by fitting an orbit that matches observations which have been made. Each observation constrains the time and position of the asteroid, but each observation is subject to some uncertainty in position and time. This produces a range of possibilities for the asteroid's true trajectory to exist.
How did you produce these visualizations?
These visualizations are created using our open source adam-core software. You can reproduce these results by following the example here.