An Asteroid Could Hit Earth In 2032, NASA Says. Here's What To Know About The Potential "City...

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An asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has roughly a 0.28% chance of hitting Earth in about eight years, NASA says ⁘ though at one point earlier its estimate reached as high as 3.1%. Such an impact, if it occurred, would have the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes.

CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood said if it landed in a populated area, it would "be truly catastrophic," but the effects would be localized.

"At this point, it's 'Let's pay a lot of attention, let's get as many assets as we can observing it,'" Bruce Betts, chief scientist of The Planetary Society, told the AFP news agency.

Dubbed 2024 YR4 , the asteroid was first spotted on December 27, 2024, by the El Sauce Observatory in Chile. Based on its brightness, astronomers estimate it is between 130 and 300 feet wide.

"An asteroid this size impacts Earth on average every few thousand years and could cause severe damage to a local region," the European Space Agency said in a statement .

By New Year's Eve, it had landed on the desk of Kelly Fast, acting planetary defense officer at U.S. space agency NASA, as an object of concern.

"You get observations, they drop off again. This one looked like it had the potential to stick around," she told AFP.

The risk assessment kept climbing, and on Jan. 29, the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), a global planetary defense collaboration, issued a memo.