NASA will use the James Webb Space Telescope to gather crucial data on the size of asteroid 2024 YR4, which has a small chance of striking Earth in 2032.

The $10 billion orbiting observatory will give astronomers a better sense of the near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4's size and position.

The Webb telescope is well-suited to identify asteroid 2024 YR4's size. Webb views a type of light we can't see with the naked eye, called infrared. Infrared light is largely heat energy, allowing Webb to observe the heat from distant objects, whether they're planets or distant galaxies.