Asteroid 2024 YR4, once considered the most likely threat to Earth, now appears to be off the table after new data revealed that it will narrowly miss hitting the moon instead of impacting Earth on December 22, 2032. The discovery was made by Dr. Andy Rivkin, a planetary astronomer from the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, and Julien de Wit, associate professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the James Webb Space Telescope. Their observations, taken on February 18 and 26, improved the asteroid's position and narrowly ruled out a once-in-a-lifetime lunar impact. The researchers developed new techniques for using Webb's instruments to detect the asteroid, which was among the faintest ever made of an asteroid. They applied for approval to use the telescope, which is the only observatory with a chance of spotting the asteroid before 2028.