An asteroid that space experts formerly determined had a small chance of colliding with Earth has been seen for the first time.
Nasa said scientists used the Webb Space Telescope to capture more information about the asteroid and have established it is the size of a building. The telescope captured in-depth pictures of the asteroid 2024 YR4, which they had once predicted could collide with Earth in 2032.
The asteroid was detected late last year and initial predictions placed it at a 3 per cent chance of hitting the planet. Additional analysis has since changed the probability to around zero per cent, though there is no guarantee of this, and some scientists have warned it could instead hit the moon.
Information released by Nasa and the European Space Agency estimated the asteroid as nearly 200ft (60 metres) wide and about the height of a 15-storey building. It is the smallest object ever observed by the observatory, the biggest and most powerful ever sent into space.
Johns Hopkins University astronomer Andrew Rivkin said the observations by Webb served as invaluable practice for other asteroids that may threaten us in years to come.
Here is what we know.
Could the asteroid hit us?
It was initially feared there was a small percentage chance that the asteroid could smash into Earth within the next decade.
But after in-depth experiments and analysis, Nasa said in February: “There is no significant potential for this asteroid to impact our planet for the next century. The asteroid 2024 YR4 is now rated at Level 0 out of 10 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, meaning the likelihood of a collision is zero, or is so low as to be effectively zero.”
What would happen if an asteroid did hit Earth?
It is likely that should we ever be hit by an asteroid we would have prior knowledge that it was coming.
Nasa has a dedicated Asteroid Watch team working from offices in California whose sole job is to search the skies looking for any potential objects that could be heading our way.
Asteroids have hit the Earth and moon before. The last close shave was in 2022 and was labelled the asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1, which was estimated to be twice the height of the Empire State Building in New York City. It flew past Earth on what was estimated as the closest approach in 200 years, although it was still at a safe distance of 1.2 million miles.
The most significant asteroid so far to hit Earth was 66 million years ago. The mountain-size asteroid struck South America and left a crater off the coast of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, which measured 93 miles wide and 12 miles deep.
Scientists believe it created massive tsunamis and threw so much seawater and dust into the atmosphere that it cut off sunlight, lowered temperatures worldwide and in turn caused the extinction of the dinosaur population.
