JWST Observations of Asteroid 2024 YR4 Rule Out a 2032 Lunar Impact and Demonstrate a New Regime for Planetary Defense Follow-up

TL;DR

JWST observations significantly extended the orbit tracking of asteroid 2024 YR4, ruling out a lunar impact in 2032 and establishing a new planetary defense follow-up regime using space-based telescopes.

Contribution

This study demonstrates the use of JWST for precise orbit determination of near-Earth objects, enabling hazard assessment beyond ground-based capabilities.

Findings

Extended the observational arc by eight months.

Ruled out a lunar impact in 2032 with high confidence.

Achieved the faintest detection of a near-Earth object to date.

Abstract

At the end of its discovery apparition, the $\sim$60 m near-Earth object 2024 YR4 was associated with a non-zero probability of lunar impact during its 2032 December 22 close approach. While posing no threat to Earth, a lunar impact of this scale could have consequences for Earth-orbiting infrastructure, as well as for human exploration on and around the Moon. We present new JWST/NIRCam observations from 2026 February 18 and 26 that extend the observational arc by eight months, reduce the uncertainty in the 2032 lunar encounter by a factor $>$30, and constitute the faintest detection of a near-Earth object to date, reaching $V \sim 30.5$ -- beyond the $V \sim 27$ ground-based limit. The updated orbit solution yields a predicted miss distance of $22{\,}900 \pm 800$ km (1$\sigma$) from the center of the Moon, thus ruling out a lunar impact. Despite challenges due to the limited number of reference stars and saturation and trailing effects, we derive astrometric positions with three independent analysis methods, demonstrating consistency at the $\lesssim$50 mas level. These observations extend the orbital arc at epochs when the object is not accessible from the ground, advancing the timeline for hazard assessment by two years relative to the next feasible ground-based recovery. This capability is critical in an emerging regime of planetary defense characterized by the discovery of decameter-scale objects by next-generation surveys. These objects are far more common but rapidly become inaccessible to ground-based follow-up. In this regime, hazard assessment can become follow-up-limited, requiring targeted space-based observations, such as those demonstrated here, to reliably constrain impact probabilities on operationally relevant timescales.