Summary
NASA has lowered the estimated risk of asteroid 2024 YR4 striking Earth in December 2032 to 1.5%, down from 3.1% a day earlier. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) estimate stands at 1.38%.
The asteroid, 40-90 meters wide, could cause significant city-level destruction but not a global catastrophe.
The projected impact corridor spans the Pacific, South America, Africa, and South Asia.
NASA also estimates a 0.8% chance of the asteroid hitting the Moon.
It technically would alter the moons orbit, but not by a lot. This asteroid would impact with roughly the energy of a nuclear bomb, which sounds like a lot, but on the scale of our moon it’s negligible.
A rough estimation given my limited understanding of physics is that to change the moon’s orbit by 1 m/s, you would need to impart something like 10²² joules of energy into it. Wikipedia says that if this asteroid hits the moon, the impact energy will be around 10¹⁶ joules. I don’t know how much you know about exponents, but 10¹⁶ is approximately 0% of the way to 10²², and that’s just change of 1 m/s
Of course, someone who actually understands physics is free to correct me if I’m wrong