The Brief

Over the next several weeks, astronomers will be looking closely at an asteroid that could be as big as a football field as they try to determine just how likely it is to strike Earth in 2032.

The chances currently stand at 2.1%, or about 1 in 47. Astronomers stress that as they refine orbital calculations for 2024 YR4, as the asteroid is called, the odds are likely to fall to zero. (There's even a slimmer chance that the asteroid could impact the moon.)

Here's a look at how these objects are found, classified and tracked — and what, if anything, can be done to prevent an Earth impact.

What is a 'Near-Earth Object'?

Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are asteroids or comets nudged into our neighborhood of space by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets. They are chunks of rock, metal or ice left over from the formation of the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago.

Most are too small to worry about, but an impact from larger NEOs could cause considerable localized damage, such as the meteor that struck the Chelyabinsk region of Russia, in 2013. It shattered windows and caused hundreds of injuries over a wide area. Destruction from the largest of these objects, such as the asteroid that likely caused the extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, could wipe out humans.

How are NEOs located?

Each night, teams of astronomers in the U.S., Europe and Asia photograph the night sky using a worldwide network of large ground-based telescopes.

The instruments used for these sky surveys are typically "wide field" telescopes designed to take in a large chunk of the sky at a time, according to Larry Denneau, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, which runs the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS).

"We try to cover as much sky as possible," he says. "We don't need to see as far as possible out in the universe."

What Denneau and others are looking for is an unexpected, telltale movement against the background of stars that indicates the presence of a previously unidentified NEO.

Objects that are closer to Earth appear to move faster than those farther away. "Imagine you pull up to a railroad track and there's a train whipping by," explains Carson Fuls, director of the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona. "Now imagine you see a railroad track in the distance you. That doesn't appear to be moving that fast."

In the same way, an asteroid that is close to the Earth will appear to be moving faster than one that is farther away, even if they are traveling at the same speed.

ATLAS operates four telescopes. When it's dark, they are constantly taking pictures of the sky, says Denneau, whose team was the first to spot 2024 YR4 from observations made on a remotely operated telescope in Chile.

"These [are] big 100-megapixel images that come back to Honolulu and our computers reduce them and look for objects that are star-like, but moving in the exposure," he explains.

Images of 2024 YR4 as it tracks across the sky.

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JPL

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NASA Center for Near-Earth Object Studies

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With the help of computer algorithms, the astronomers can then winnow down the data. "You can kind of put the good ones in one bin and the bad ones in the other bin and have, you know, a few that are in between" to screen out false detections, Denneau says.

"We do that for hundreds of footprints at each telescope every single night," he says.

Catalina Sky Survey operates three telescopes. The telescope with the widest field "can get a little over half of the visible sky" at a time, Fuls says.

"The real trick … when we find and track these objects is [that] we're kind of looking at a 2D image," Fuls says. That makes it difficult to determine the exact distance, he says. "We can start to guess how far away it is once we observe its orbit."

How do astronomers know how far and how big it is?

Optical telescopes are the best bet for spotting NEOs, but radio telescopes are the surest way to determine distance, according to Anne Virkki, a research fellow at the University of Helsinki who has tracked asteroids using radar. "And that's kind of the third dimension that's really important," she says.

Radio telescopes, which use a giant dish to collect radio waves emitted from celestial objects, can also be used to bounce a radar off NEOs to determine their size, Fuls says. Unfortunately, 2024 YR4 is already too far away for that. But there are other ways, he says.

A radar image of asteroid 2014 JO25 from a radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory/NASA/NSF in Puerto Rico taken on April 17, 2017, is shown on a screen.

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Observing how bright an asteroid is and how that brightness changes over time can help in determining its shape, how fast it's spinning and what it's made of. But without knowing how reflective it is, that method is still a lot of guesswork, Fuls acknowledges. Putting together a coherent picture is a bit like solving a puzzle. "You'll first of all start to piece together the orbit and then we'll say, 'Aha, it's this, right?' and 'We think it's at this location or at this distance,' so we can get an estimate of the size from that," he says.

How do scientists know if an asteroid could impact the Earth?

Once an object is photographed, it gets run through a database to determine if it's already known to astronomers. That only takes about 10 minutes, Fuls says. If it appears to be new, follow-up observers report it up the chain and put it on a list to re-observe in an hour or two when it's moved a bit, as a second check, he says.

If it's confirmed as a new discovery, the object is reported to the Minor Planet Center run by the International Astronomical Union.

"From the short motion we have over a span of about 30 minutes, we can tell whether the object is likely to be close to the Earth," Denneau says.

But astronomers have to deal with a serious blind spot: If an object approaches the Earth with the sun behind it, it's difficult or impossible for optical telescopes to separate the light reflected off a tiny asteroid from the intense glare of the sun. That's how the meteor in Russia snuck up on the Earth without being noticed in 2013. "The Chelyabinsk meteor … came from the sun side," Denneau says. "So no telescope saw it before it impacted."

What happens if it looks like a possible hit?

It depends on how large it is. If the object is big enough to be a real threat and has a 1% or greater chance of hitting Earth based on initial calculations, it is reported to the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), a global collaboration started in 2013 to monitor and track space objects that could impact Earth. For 2024 YR4, IAWN issued its first-ever Potential Asteroid Impact Notification to put the astronomical community on alert to collect as much information as possible on it to try to determine if it will impact.

Astronomers then get busy making follow-up observations, hoping to find out more about the object — how big it is, what it's made of and whether it's a threat to Earth.

One group of amateurs, known as the International Occultation Timing Association, or IOTA, often use their own telescopes and sensitive cameras to look for the sudden dimming of light from a distant star as an asteroid or comet passes in front of it — something known as an occultation. With multiple observers pooling their measurements of that dip in the light from slightly different locations, they can help determine the size of the asteroid.

"There are some very, very professional amateurs ... who've got some very advanced capabilities," says Kelly Fast, the acting planetary defense officer for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. "They can provide additional observations once a new object is discovered."

Pulling together all the data, astronomers are able to do something similar to what the National Hurricane Center does to show the forecast probability of a tropical storm track, Catalina Sky Survey's Fuls says.

"Think about a cone or a circle of probability where this thing can be. And as we get more observations, it should start to shrink down," he says.

Another way of visualizing it is to imagine "a cloud that's ... maybe hundreds or thousands of miles in diameter," Denneau of ATLAS says. "Some of that intersects the Earth in 2032."

But astronomers are playing for time. Soon, the asteroid will be too dim even for the largest ground-based telescopes to see and it's already too far away for checking its distance with radar. If they don't get a good fix on 2024 YR4 before then, they won't get another crack at observing it until it comes around again in 2028 — just four years before a potential impact.

"What we really need is the object to move further along its orbit," to get more data to help tell astronomers where it's heading, he says. "That will give us a chance to constrain the possibilities of its orbit better."

Can anything be done to prevent an impact?

In 2022, NASA's DART mission ("Double Asteroid Redirection Test") successfully crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos about 7 million miles away from Earth, shifting its orbit a tiny bit. Although Dimorphos was no threat to Earth, the project was designed to prove that redirecting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth is possible. The mission was considered a success.

So, it is possible, but there are a number of caveats. 

First, the object needs to be solid to have something to push against. So determining what it's made of is paramount. "Is it rocky? Does it have a lot of metallic content? Is it a rubble pile? Is it a solid, monolithic object?" NASA's Fast wonders aloud. "All of that is useful information."

Even so, space missions take years to get going and such a mission would require considerable lead time. In the case of 2024 YR4, there might be years to plan something like that and to get a spacecraft to the target object. But that might not always be the case, Fuls says.

A 2023 NASA report says the very biggest asteroids like the one that killed the dinosaurs are few and far between and the space agency thinks all of them have been identified and tracked. Another 95% of those a size smaller (which NASA describes as able to "cause global devastation [and] the possible collapse of civilization") have been discovered.

After that, the objects become less lethal, but fewer of them are known. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is thought to be between 40 meters and 90 meters in diameter (130 feet to about 300 feet), which puts it between two of NASA's lower classifications: 50 meters (165 feet), which could cause "local devastation" — of which only an estimated 7% are known and 140 meters (460 feet), with 40% unknown and the potential to be deadly over metro areas and states with likely mass casualties.

Is there any good news?

Yes! At this point, it's much more likely that 2024 YR4 won't hit the Earth. And while it could do considerable damage if it hit over a populated area, it's not a planet killer!
Copyright 2025 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Since 1977, Richard Santillan has been to every Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium. 

“The tradition goes from my father, to me, to my children and grandchildren. Some of my best memories are with my father and children here at Dodger Stadium,” Santillan told The LA Local, smiling under the shade of palm trees near the entrance to the ballpark Wednesday morning. He was there to protest the team less than 24 hours before Opening Day.

Santillan, like countless other loyal Dodgers fans, is grappling with his fan identity over the team’s decision to accept an invitation to the White House and owner Mark Walter’s ties to ICE detention facilities.

More than 30 people joined Santillan on Wednesday morning for a press conference held near 1000 Vin Scully Drive to convey a message directly to the team. 

“We are demanding the Dodgers stop participating in funding of inhumane treatment of families and do not go to the White House to celebrate with the criminal in chief,” Evelyn Escatiola told the crowd. “Together, we have the power to make a change.”

Escatiola, a former dean of East Los Angeles College and longtime community organizer, urged fans to flex their economic power by “letting the Dodgers know that we do not support repression.”

Jorge “Coqui” Rodriguez, a lifelong Dodgers fan, spoke to the crowd and called on Dodgers ownership to divest from immigration detention centers owned and operated by GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Jorge Coqui H Rodriguez speaks at a press conference outside Dodger Stadium on March 25, 2026, to demand the Dodgers not to visit the White House following their 2025 World Series win.

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In a phone interview a day before the protest, Rodriguez told The LA Local he did not want the Dodgers using his “cheve” or beer money to fund detention centers. 

“They can’t take our parking money, our cacahuate money, our cheve money, our Dodger Dog money and invest those funds into corporations that are imprisoning people. It’s wrong,” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez considers the Dodgers one of the most racially diverse teams and said the players need to support fans at a time when heightened immigration enforcement has become more common across L.A.

The team’s 2025’s visit to the White House drew ire from the largely Latino fan base, citing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on immigrants. 

In June, the team came under further scrutiny when rumors swirled online that federal immigration agents were using the stadium’s parking, which immigration authorities later denied in statements posted on social media accounts.

The team again came under fire after not releasing a statement on the impacts of ICE raids on its mostly Latino fan base at the height of immigration enforcement last summer. The team later agreed to invest $1 million to support families affected by immigration enforcement.

When he learned the Dodgers were pledging only $1 million to families in need, Rodriguez called the amount a  “slap in the face.” 

“These guys just bought the Lakers for billions of dollars and they give a million dollars to fight for legal services? That’s a joke,” Rodriguez said. “They need to have a moral backbone and not be investing in those companies.”

According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, former Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershawsaid last week that he is looking forward to the trip.

“I went when President [Joe] Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President [Donald] Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”

The Dodgers have yet to announce when their planned visit will take place. 

Santillan sometimes laments his decision to give up his season tickets in protest of the team. His connection to the stadium and the memories he has made there with family and friends will last a lifetime, he said. On Thursday, he will uphold his tradition and be there for the first pitch of the season, but with a heavy heart.

“It’s a family tradition, but the Dodgers have a lot of work to do,” he said.

A local favorite mom-and-pop bookshop in Eagle Rock is facing displacement due to a steep rent hike. The owners say theirs is just one of several small businesses along Eagle Rock Boulevard struggling to keep up with lease increases.

Over the past 19 years, many in the neighborhood have come to love READ Books for its eclectic collection of used titles and shop dog Florence.

Co-owner Jeremy Kaplan said it’s been a delight to grow with the community over the years.

“Like seeing kids come back in, who were in grade school and now they’re in college,” Kaplan said.

But the building where Kaplan and wife Debbie rent was recently sold, and the rent increased by more than 130% to $2,805 a month, Kaplan said. He told LAist it was an increase his small business simply could not absorb.

Kaplan said he originally was given 30 days notice of the rent increase. After some research, assistance from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office and some pro-bono legal help, Kaplan said he pushed back and got the 90-day notice he’s afforded by state law.

California Senate Bill 1103 requires landlords to give businesses with five or less employees 90 days’ notice for rent increases exceeding 10%, among other protections.

Systems Real Estate, the property management company, did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

What can small businesses do? 

Nadia Segura, directing attorney of the Small Business Program at pro bono legal aid non-profit Bet Tzedek said California law does not currently allow for rent control for commercial tenancies.

Outside of the protections under SB 1103, Segura said small businesses like READ Books don’t have much other recourse. And even then, commercial landlords are not required to inform their tenants of their protections under the law.

“There’s still a lot of people that don’t know about SB 1103. And then it’s very sad that they tell them they have these rent increases and within a month they have to leave,” Segura said.

She said her group is seeing steep rent hikes like this for commercial tenants across the city.

“We are seeing this even more with the World Cup coming up, the Olympics coming up. And I will say it was very sad to see that also after the wildfires,” Segura said.

Part of Bet Tzedek’s ongoing work is to advocate for small businesses, working with landlords who are increasing rents to see if they are willing to give business owners longer leases that lock in rents.

What’s next 

After READ Books posted about their situation on social media, commenters chimed in to express their outrage and love for the little shop.

While he looks for a new spot, Kaplan says he’s forming a coalition of local businesses and activist groups to see what can be done to help other small businesses facing similar displacement. He wants to address the displacement issue for businesses like his, which have made Eagle Rock the distinctive neighborhood that it is today.

Owl Talk, a longtime Eagle Rock staple selling clothing and accessories in a unit in the same building as READ Books, is facing a “more than double” rent increase, according to a post on their Instagram account.

Kaplan said he’s been in touch with the office of state Assemblywoman Jessica Caloza and wants to explore the possibility of introducing legislation to set up protections for small businesses like his, including rent-control measures or a vacancy tax for landlords. Kaplan said he also reached out to the office of state Sen. Maria Durazo.

By his count, Kaplan said there are about a dozen businesses within surrounding blocks that are at risk of closing their doors or have shuttered due to rent increases or other struggles.

When READ Books was founded during the Great Recession, Kaplan said he knew it was a longshot to open a bookstore at the same time so many were struggling to stay in business.

“It was kind of interesting to be doing something that neighborhoods needed. That was important to me growing up, that was important to my children, that was important to my wife growing up,” Kaplan said.

“And then somebody comes in and says, ‘We’re gonna over double your rent.”

Topline:

Frozen budget: Most of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property illuminated by lights pay on their county property tax bill. The amount people pay depends on the kind of property they own and how much they benefit from lighting. A typical single-family home currently pays $53 annually, and in total, the assessments bring in about $45 million annually for the city to repair and maintain streetlights. Changing the amount the Bureau of Street Lighting gets from the assessment requires a vote among property owners who benefit from the lights.

Ballots: L.A. City Council’s vote gives city staff the green light to prepare and send out those ballots. Miguel Sangalang, who oversees the bureau, said at a committee meeting earlier this month that he expects to send out ballots by April 17. Notices about the ballots will be sent out prior to the ballots themselves.

Near unanimous vote: L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez was the only “No” vote Tuesday, saying she wanted to see a more current strategic plan for the bureau. Sangalang said the bureau developed a plan in 2022 that lays out how money will be spent. Councilmember Imelda Padilla was absent for the vote.

Vote count: Votes will be weighted according to the assessment amount. Basically, the more you’re asked to pay yearly to maintain streetlights, the more your vote will count. Ballots received before June 2 will be tabulated by the L.A. City Clerk.

How much more money: According to a report, the amount needed in assessments from property owners to meet the repair and maintenance needs of the city’s streetlighting in the next fiscal year is nearly $112 million.

Use of the money: Sangalang said at a March 11 committee meeting that the extra funds would be used to double the number of staff to handle repairs and procure solar streetlights, which don’t face the threat of copper wire theft. That would all potentially reduce the time it takes to repair simple fixes down to a week. Currently, city residents wait for months to see broken streetlights repaired. The assessment would come with a three-year auditing mechanism.