NASA: 38-Metre Asteroid 2025 QD8 to Make Close Flyby Tomorrow

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) say an asteroid roughly the size of a commercial jet will make a close but harmless flyby of Earth tomorrow, passing at blistering speed about half the distance to the Moon.

The space rock, designated 2025 QD8, is about 38 metres (124 feet) in diameter and will make its closest approach at 15:56 BST, traveling faster than 28,000 miles per hour (about 45,000 kilometres per hour). At its nearest point the asteroid is expected to be about 135,465 miles (218,009 kilometres) from Earth's surface — a little more than half the distance to the Moon.

Observations and orbit calculations carried out by planetary defence teams show no risk of impact. NASA and ESA said the trajectory of 2025 QD8 will safely miss Earth. Scientists routinely track such near-Earth objects to refine their orbits and assess any future risk.

An object the size of 2025 QD8 could cause severe regional damage if it entered the atmosphere and reached the surface, and agencies often describe similar asteroids as able to inflict city-scale destruction in the unlikely event of an impact. However, current measurements and tracking place 2025 QD8 on a clear pass for this encounter, and no close-approach predictions indicate a collision.

NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies and other monitoring groups use telescopic observations to determine an asteroid's size, shape and orbit. Speed, trajectory and distance at closest approach are calculated from those observations; further tracking can tighten uncertainty in future passes. Close approaches such as this provide opportunities to refine orbital solutions and improve predictions of long-term behaviour.

Near-Earth objects of tens of metres in diameter pass within lunar distance on occasion. The Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013, which exploded over Russia and caused widespread window damage and injuries from the shock wave, was smaller — estimated at about 20 metres across — and did not strike the surface intact. Astronomers note that while many small objects burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere, larger bodies can pose significant hazards if they intersect Earth on a collision course.

Space agencies continue to expand survey capabilities and planetary-defence planning to detect and characterize objects well before any potential impact. Instruments on the ground and in space, along with computational tools used by NASA and ESA, are designed to identify, track and model the trajectories of near-Earth asteroids such as 2025 QD8.

For the public, agencies emphasize that a close pass does not mean an imminent threat in this case. Scientists will continue to monitor 2025 QD8 before, during and after the flyby to confirm its path and to collect data that will inform assessments of future encounters.