After reaching seemingly apocalyptic levels yesterday, the odds of "city killer" asteroid 2024 YR4 striking our planet have dropped dramatically.
NASA announced in an X post yesterday that the space rock now has a 1 in 67, or 1.5% of hitting home in 2032.
This exhale-worthy update was specifically based on new orbital data on the asteroid -- which measures between 131 and 295 feet in diameter -- that was gathered between February 18 and 19, per the space agency's website.
"New observations of asteroid 2024 YR4 helped us update its chance of impact in 2032," NASA wrote on X. "Our understanding of the asteroid's path improves with every observation. We'll keep you posted."
This marks a relieving reversal given that, just a day earlier, the impact risk factor clocked in at 1 in 32, or 3.1% -- making it the most dangerous asteroid since the inception of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) Sentry Risk Table, Space.com reported.
Yesterday's percentage spike was "historic," according to Richard Moissl, head of the European Space Agency's planetary defense office, which places the current impact odds at just 1.38%.
This turn of events is in line with scientist predictions that the risk would skyrocket before reversing course.
Bruce Betts, head researchers for the nonprofit Planetary Society, forecast that as astronomers collected more data, the odds edge up before dipping back to zero, as was the case with many killer asteroids in the past.
However, we're not totally out of the woods just yet. YR4 still sits at a level three on the Torino Scale -- a standard rubric for the danger of NEOs (Near Earth Objects) that measure over 65 feet in diameter and have a 1% or greater chance of deep impact.
According to the scale, this asteroid is a "close encounter, meriting attention by astronomers" and boasts a "1% or greater chance of collision capable of localized destruction."
If it did hit home, the ensuing energy blast would be equivalent to 8 megatons of TNT, roughly 500 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the Independent reported.
YR4's projected path encompasses eight of the world's biggest population hubs -- including Bogota in Colombia, Lagos in Nigeria, and Mumbai and Chennai in India -- with the total at-risk population clocking in at around 110 million people.
"If you put it over Paris or London or New York, you basically wipe out the whole city and some of the environs," warned Betts.
Even if it does miss our planet, the space rock still has a 1 in 125 or 0.8% chance of striking the moon, Space.com reported.
Not to mention that predicting the path of the asteroid at this time is notoriously difficult, hence the whiplash-inducing fluctuations in impact probability. Catalina Sky Survey scientist David Rankin analogized the uncertainty to a yardstick.
"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," the asteroid tracker 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."
He added, "In this case, that 'fraction of an inch' is tiny uncertainties in the positional measurements of the asteroid from the telescopes' images that can arise from small timing errors and small positional errors."
We might have to wait a while to accurately assess the risk.
The asteroid will fly behind the Sun in April, putting it out of sight of most of Earth's terrestrial telescopes until it swings back into view in 2028.