Humanity's most powerful space telescope is setting its sights on the most dangerous known asteroid in the solar system.
According to a blog post from the European Space Agency (ESA), an international team of astronomers has been granted emergency use of the mighty James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the potentially hazardous asteroid 2024 YR4 in the coming months. The building-size space rock was discovered hurtling through our solar system by NASA's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System in December 2024 and currently sits atop the agency's asteroid watch list, with a roughly 1-in-43 chance (2.3%) of impacting our planet in December 2032.
