A newly discovered asteroid estimated to be about 62 feet wide will zoom near Earth on Monday, though it is not expected to pose a threat to the planet.
The asteroid, officially known as 2026 JH2, will come within about 57,000 miles of Earth, according to the European Space Agency — a distance much closer than that of the moon. The moon is, on average, 238,855 miles from Earth.
The asteroid was discovered on May 10 by astronomers with the Mount Lemmon Survey, an astronomical project based in Arizona’s Santa Catalina Mountains.
It is rare for an object of this size to make such a close flyby of Earth, though not unprecedented.
The space rock will reach its closest approach around 6 p.m. ET, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which maintains a database of the physical characteristics and orbits of most known natural objects in the solar system. As that happens, the asteroid is expected to reach its peak brightness and may be visible to amateur astronomers with small telescopes.
NASA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Virtual Telescope Project, a website run by Italy’s Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory that broadcasts views from several telescopes, is streaming the flyby live online.
Many asteroids smaller than this one frequently pass by the planet unnoticed, while some others streak through Earth’s atmosphere as bright fireballs in the sky.
The famous Chelyabinsk meteor is the largest space rock known to have entered Earth’s atmosphere in recent history. It exploded in the atmosphere above Russia in 2013, raining fragments of rock over the Chelyabinsk district and causing broken windows and damage around the city and its surrounding areas.
That explosion, caused by friction as the meteor hurtled through the atmosphere, released 30 times more energy than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, according to NASA. The agency estimated the 11,000-metric-ton Chelyabinsk meteor to measure around 59 feet across — slightly smaller than asteroid 2026 JH2, though its exact size it not yet known.
Astronomers routinely track asteroids and comets that could come near Earth using a network of telescopes on the ground and in space. NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations program is responsible for finding potentially dangerous asteroids and studying their orbits to determine if they pose a risk.
Astronomers are keeping an especially close eye on one large space rock because it is expected to pass much closer to Earth in a few years than asteroid 2026 JH2.
That asteroid, called Apophis, measures about 1,200 feet across and is projected to come within 20,000 miles of Earth on April 13, 2029.
NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX probe is expected to rendezvous with Apophis in June 2029 to study how the close flyby of Earth affects the space rock’s orbit and physical properties. The mission was designed as a follow-on to the OSIRIS-REx mission that collected the first-ever samples from an asteroid and returned them to Earth in 2023.
The probe has been operating in space since it launched in 2016, but the Trump administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 would end the mission before the asteroid rendezvous — part of sweeping cuts proposed for NASA. If the White House proposal is enacted as is, OSIRIS-APEX would be among more than 50 missions canceled.
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