❓WHAT HAPPENED: NASA is monitoring multiple asteroids, including a bus-sized asteroid called “2025 XF1,” which is expected to come within 195,000 miles of Earth.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The asteroid “2025 XF1” will make its closest approach on Saturday. Other asteroids are being monitored this week.
💬KEY QUOTE: “The ‘potentially hazardous’ designation simply means over many centuries and millennia the asteroid’s orbit may evolve into one that has a chance of impacting Earth.” – Paul Chodas, CNEOS manager
🎯IMPACT: NASA has concluded that none of the monitored asteroids pose a significant impact risk to Earth at this time.
A large, bus-sized asteroid named “2025 XF1” will pass within just 195,000 miles of Earth this Saturday. NASA says it is monitoring the asteroid, which is estimated to be 41 feet across, is traveling at nearly 8,000 miles per hour, according to the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The agency also says it is tracking a second, bus-sized rock, dubbed “2025 XK1,” which is set to come within 624,000 miles of Earth on Friday.
Additionally, NASA says two larger, plane-sized asteroids, “2020 WH20” and “2016 YH,” will also make fairly close—albeit less concerning—passes near Earth on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
Asteroids are rocky and metallic remnants from the formation of the solar system, primarily located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Those classified as “near-Earth objects” have orbits bringing them within 120 million miles of the sun, while “potentially hazardous asteroids” (PHAs) are larger and come within 4.6 million miles of Earth’s orbit.
Conversely, comets—though similar to asteroids—are small objects composed of ice, dust, and small rocks that originate in the Kuiper belt or Oort Cloud on the outskirts of the solar system. As comets approach the inner solar system, the sun’s heat tends to vaporize comet material, causing the objects to develop a “glowing” atmosphere, making them far more visible to telescopes and even the naked eye than asteroids.
Earlier this year, NASA identified an asteroid, “2024 YR4,” with a 3.1 percent chance of impact in 2032—the highest probability ever recorded for an object of its size. However, further observations ruled out any significant risk.
Paul Chodas, manager of the CNEOS, notes the “potentially hazardous” label does not indicate an imminent threat: “The ‘potentially hazardous’ designation simply means over many centuries and millennia the asteroid’s orbit may evolve into one that has a chance of impacting Earth.”
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