YR4 made headlines in February with the news that it had a chance of hitting Earth on Dec. 22, 2032, as determined by an analysis from NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

NASA and other global space scientists keep a close eye on asteroids known as near-Earth objects (NEOs). These are comets or asteroids that come within 120 million miles of the Sun — close enough to pass through Earth’s orbital zone.