ARTICLE AD BOX
A diagram illustrating the way of asteroid 2025 TF (green line) during its adjacent walk of Earth. (IAU/Minor Planet Center)
Earth was grazed by a tiny asteroid past week, which passed astir arsenic adjacent arsenic the International Space Station (ISS). That makes it the second-closest known flyby connected record.
The asteroid, designated 2025 TF, whizzed implicit Antarctica astatine 00:47:26 UTC connected Wednesday 1 October, astatine an altitude of astir 428 kilometers (266 miles). That's wrong the orbit of the ISS, which ranges betwixt 370 and 460 kilometers.
That's a beauteous adjacent shave, but it's not the closest we cognize of. That grant belongs to a stone called 2020 VT4, which zipped past astatine a region of conscionable 368 kilometers successful November 2020.
Related: NASA Says Nuclear Explosion Could Save Moon From Asteroid Strike successful 2032
Obviously, we're talking astir the closest non-impacting flyby here. On occasion, immoderate volition marque interaction with the atmosphere, pain disconnected a small mass, and skip disconnected similar a chromatic from the aboveground of a pond.
Plenty of other asteroids person gotten overmuch closer still. Just ask the dinosaurs. And of course, it's lone retired of those we cognize astir – it's apt that successful its 4.5-billion-year history, Earth has had adjacent person calls.
Asteroid 2025 TF, a fewer hours aft its closest walk to Earth. (ESA/Las Cumbres Observatory)Even if it had deed Earth, 2025 TF wouldn't person been thing to interest about. The stone lone measures betwixt 1 and 3 meters (3.3 and 9.9 feet) wide, truthful astatine astir it would person enactment connected a bully airy amusement for anyone watching, and perchance near a tiny meteorite for immoderate penguin to find.
The stone wasn't really discovered until it had already passed Earth. The Kitt Peak-Bok Observatory successful Arizona was the archetypal to study it, astatine 06:36 UTC, but it was aboriginal tracked backmost to information successful the Catalina Sky Survey, which captured it conscionable 2 hours aft its closest pass.
While 2025 TF is presently charging distant into the inky blackness, it volition apt plaything backmost astir for different pass. According to JPL estimates of its aboriginal orbit, it'll beryllium backmost successful our vicinity successful April 2087, but this clip it'll support its distance.
It volition lone travel wrong astir 8 cardinal kilometers of Earth, oregon astir 21 times farther distant than the Moon.
