A recently discovered asteroid has a 1.2 percent chance of hitting Earth in 2032, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced today, which will coordinate its monitoring to more accurately predict its path.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered last December, thanks to a special hazard detection telescope located in Chile. It is estimated to be 40-100 meters long and could hit Earth on 22 December 2032, according to automatic warning systems.

“An asteroid of this size hits Earth on average every few thousand years and could cause severe damage to a region,” ESA said. So far, the probability of the asteroid hitting Earth is 1.2 percent, according to ESA’s calculations, which those of NASA’s special agency that deals with these celestial bodies agree with. The asteroid is classified as a level 3 on NASA’s Torino scale, which is based on the probability of a celestial body striking or colliding with the Earth. This scale starts at 0 (no risk) and goes up to 10 (total destruction).

ESA believes that it is very likely that new observations of the asteroid will lead to a revision of the risk scale to 0. It explained that “it is important to recall that the probability of impact is initially elevated and then, with additional observations, drops rapidly to zero.”

As a member of the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), ESA will coordinate future observations to more accurately assess the risk of an impact. For this purpose, it will use the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory located in Chile. However, this may prove difficult because the orbit of 2024 YR4 will take it significantly further away from Earth in the coming months. There is therefore the possibility that observations may not be enough to “rule out any possibility of an impact” in 2032.

In that case, scientists and the world will have to wait until 2028, when the asteroid will again be on an observation path from Earth.