NASA is monitoring a bus-sized asteroid that’s soaring towards Earth at nearly 8,000 miles per hour, according to the space agency’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
Estimated to measure some 41 feet across, the asteroid known as “2025 XF1” is projected to come as close as 195,000 miles from our planet on Saturday, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
2025 XF1 is not the only space rock being monitored by NASA this week. The agency is also tracking another bus-sized asteroid, “2025 XK1,” that’s due to get within 624,000 miles of Earth on Friday.
NASA is also monitoring two plane-sized asteroids, one called “2020 WH20” and another called “2016 YH,” which are each speeding towards Earth at nearly 20,000 miles per hour, making their closest approaches on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
Asteroids are small, rocky masses left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. They’re found concentrated in the main asteroid belt, which lies around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
“Near-Earth objects” is the designation given to asteroids whose orbits bring them within 120 million miles of the sun and into our planet’s “orbital neighborhood.”
Earlier this year, in February, data from the CNEOS found that the impact probability of an asteroid called “2024 YR4” in 2032 was at 3.1 percent, which was “the highest impact probability NASA has ever recorded for an object of this size or larger,” NASA said at the time.
Further observations this year led NASA to conclude that “the object poses no significant impact risk to Earth in 2032 and beyond,” according to the space agency.
NASA advises that “the majority of near-Earth objects have orbits that don’t bring them very close to Earth and therefore pose no risk of impact.”
A small portion of them, known as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), do merit closer observation. Measuring over 460 feet in size, PHAs have orbits that bring them as close as within 4.6 million miles of the Earth’s orbit around the sun.
Despite the number of PHAs out in our solar system, none are likely to hit Earth any time soon.
Paul Chodas, manager of the CNEOS, previously told Newsweek that “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. We do not assess these long-term, many-century possibilities of impact.”
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