Here's why I'm not worried yet about this asteroid hitting Earth

Carrie Nugent

- Two days after Christmas, the Atlas sky survey team discovered a new rocky object in Earth's astronomical neighbourhood.

Atlas discovers near-Earth objects all the time: in 2024, the team discovered 167 of them. They also codiscovered comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas, which dazzled sky gazers last autumn. But this discovery was special: there's a chance the 40- to 90-metre object, known as 2024 YR4, will hit Earth in 2032.

In January, the impact probability was just over 1%, then it was raised to 2.3% in early February. Last week, the Nasa JPL Center for Near Earth Object Studies raised that to 3.1% or about a 1-in-32 chance of impact.

There are four reasons I'm not worried just yet. First, the possible impact would be in December 2032, so we've got time to prepare. Second, the asteroid is likely not terribly large by asteroid standards. The little asteroid that unexpectedly exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia, causing damage but no deaths in 2013, was roughly 20 metres across - 2024 YR4 is bigger than that but still vastly smaller than the 10km-diameter object that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. If 2024 YR4 hits, it would cause regional, not global, destruction. And people have time to evacuate the area.