Image courtesy of NASA/JPL
Joel Kontinen
A bus-sized asteroid zoomed past Earth yesterday.
A bus-size asteroid, first spotted just over a week age, will zoom past Earth today (Sept. 3). The space rock will not get this close to us again until Sept. 4, 2125 — almost 100 years to the day.
The asteroid, dubbed 2025 QV5, was first spotted on Aug. 24.
It is approximately 35 feet (11 meters) across, or around the same width as a
school bus is long, and is hurtling toward us at more than 13,900 mph (22,400
km/h), according to NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Asteroid Watch.
The space rock will make a close approach to Earth on
Wednesday, passing within 500,000 miles (805,000 kilometers) of our planet — or
around twice as far away from us as the moon,
according to JPL's Small-Body Database Lookup.
2025 QV5 has a roughly circular orbit around the sun,
circling our home star every 359.4 days. During this time, it drifts between
the orbits of Earth and Venus as
it is subtly pulled from side to side between the two planets. As a result, it
is unlikely to ever hit us. And even if it did, it is too small to be considered
"potentially hazardous" and most of its material would
likely burn up in the atmosphere.
Nevertheless, scientists are still keen to learn as much as
they can about the space rock, and it has been listed as a target for
NASA's Goldstone radar telescope in Barstow, California — which specializes
in tracking
and imaging near-Earth asteroids — over the coming days.
2025 QV5's orbit around the sun takes it close to Earth and Venus. For the majority of the next century, the asteroid will fly by the latter more often. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)
Source:
Harry Baker 2025
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