In recent weeks, the chances of a so-called city-killer asteroid, 2024 YR4, hitting Earth in 2032 seemed to be more and more likely. However, NASA, the European Space Agency and others have since reduced those odds to less than 1%.

However, the chance of impact is not yet 0%, and given how much fluctuation there was in the estimates from various space agencies, it raises the question: Are we safe? Or, do you still need to worry about YR4?

Jacqueline McCleary, an assistant professor of physics at Northeastern University, says it’s probably safe to breathe a sigh of relief. Agencies like NASA are constantly tracking and predicting the path of asteroids, and the rise in YR4’s impact probability, which at one point reached a 1 in 31 chance of striking Earth, is a normal part of the data collection process.

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