Will an asteroid hit Earth in 8 years? 'China has started deploying defenses'

On February 15 local time, the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that the possibility of an asteroid named "2024 YR4" hitting Earth in 2032 is 2%.

Information about "2024 YR4" is still limited, but estimates of the asteroid's diameter range from 40 meters to 90 meters, about the size of a large building.

According to media reports on February 17, Chinese astronomy experts said that the current probability of collision is only an estimate, and it is more important to continuously observe and calculate the trajectory. Even if it poses a clear threat to humanity in the future, there are still many defense strategies. China has begun to deploy a "near-Earth asteroid defense system", and scientists around the world are also collaborating on "planetary defense".

“2024 YR4” was first discovered on December 27, 2024. NASA astronomers have been using telescopes to monitor the asteroid since early January 2025. Currently, the asteroid is more than 48 million kilometers away from Earth. Although the chance of an impact is very small, astronomers are still closely monitoring it to discover more details.

It is said that the size of "2024 YR4" is far from the size of a planet-killing asteroid. "Planet killer" asteroids are space rocks measuring 1 km in diameter or larger that can cause catastrophic consequences for life. It is estimated that the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs was about 10 km in diameter.

According to Brand and Law