The most dangerous asteroid is rushing towards Earth, the chances of it hitting us are doubled PHOTO

Namely, this chance jumped to 2.2 percent from 1.2 percent last week, NASA stated on the CNEOS website.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has declared this asteroid a Level 3 on the Turin Impact Hazard Scale, making it the only one above 0.

"Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered on December 27, 2024, by the ATLAS telescope in Chile. Soon after its discovery, the Automated Asteroid Warning System determined that there was a very small chance that it would hit Earth on December 22, 2032. The asteroid is estimated to be between 40 and 100 meters wide, and asteroids like this hit our planet on average once every few thousand years and can do a lot of damage in a region that hit. That's why the object has been placed at the top of the ESA's list of dangerous asteroids, we are actively monitoring it," says the European Space Agency (ESA).

NASA estimates that this space rock weighs almost a quarter of a million tons and would explode with a force greater than 2.2 million tons of TNT, which is 150 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, writes the Telegraph.

The locations at risk, according to current calculations, are West Africa, India and South America.

A similar asteroid caused the Tunguska explosion on June 30, 1908.

The only asteroid that had a higher level on the Turin scale was 99942 Apophis, which had a level 4 in late 2004.

However, after subsequent studies of its orbit, it was removed from the Turin scale because it was determined that it does not pose a danger in the next century.