Asteroid 2024 YR4 won’t hit in 2032, but it will be back

The faint dot fixed in the center of this starfield is asteroid 2024 YR4. This is a sequence of observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in January 2025, shortly after the asteroid was discovered to have a greater than 3% chance of hitting Earth in 2032. Further observations have revealed that this asteroid won’t hit us in the foreseeable future. But, owing to a specific orbital resonance, it – and others – will keep coming back into our vicinity. Via Wikimedia Commons/ ESO/ O. Hainaut et al.