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Newsweek
22-05-2025
- Science
- Newsweek
NASA Tracking House-Sized Asteroids Approaching Earth Imminently
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. NASA is monitoring three asteroids in the vicinity of the Earth that are zipping through space at around 16,000 to 41,000 miles per hour. A bus-sized asteroid known as "2025 KH," measuring around 37 feet in diameter, soared past the Earth on Thursday morning at over 25,000 miles per hour, coming as close as within 687,000 miles from our planet, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). A larger, house-sized space rock, known as "2025 KE1," approximately 58 feet in diameter, is due to zoom past the Earth early Friday morning. The asteroid will zip by at over 41,000 miles per hour, coming within just 120,000 miles from the Earth, according to the JPL's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). The national space agency is also tracking a slightly smaller house-sized asteroid, called "2025 KC," that's around 52 feet in diameter. It is expected to fly past at over 16,000 miles per hour, reaching within 636,000 miles from planet Earth, the JPL notes. Stock image: An asteroid approaching the Earth, with an inset image showing a school bus in front of a house. Stock image: An asteroid approaching the Earth, with an inset image showing a school bus in front of a house. Getty Back in April, an asteroid known as "2024 YR4" was approximated to be around 200 feet by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. "That's just about the height of a 15-story building," Andy Rivkin, an astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, noted in a NASA blog post on April 2. Earlier this year in February, data from the CNEOS indicated that the impact probability of 2024 YR4 in 2032 was at 3.1 percent, marking "the highest impact probability NASA has ever recorded for an object of this size or larger," the space agency noted at the time. Further studies that month, however, brought that asteroid's chance of Earth impact on December 22 in 2032 down to 0.004 percent. The data showed there is "no significant potential" for 2024 YR4 to "impact our planet for the next century," NASA advised in a blog post on February 24. However, there is still a "very small chance" for 2024 YR4 to impact the Moon on that date and that probability is currently 1.7 percent, NASA noted. Asteroids are small, rocky masses left over from the formation of the solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. They are found concentrated in the main asteroid belt, orbiting around the sun between the paths of Mars and Jupiter. The orbits of these space rocks bring them within 120 million miles of the sun. Most near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids ranging in size from about 10 feet to almost 25 miles across. "The majority of near-Earth objects have orbits that don't bring them very close to Earth, and therefore pose no risk of impact," NASA says. However, a small portion of them, known as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), do require close monitoring. 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, NASA explains. Despite the number of PHAs out in our solar system, none of them are likely to hit Earth any time soon. "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," Paul Chodas, manager of the CNEOS, previously told Newsweek. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about asteroids? Let us know via science@
Time of India
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Donald Trump's NASA budget: Why it may make it difficult to track asteroids approaching Earth
The discussion around the possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth mostly remains a topic of speculation among scientists and enthusiasts. Keeping the recent speculation about YR4 and other asteroids making rounds near the Earth, NASA has been developing new equipment to detect and track potentially hazardous asteroids. However, recent budget proposals by the Trump administration might threaten to derail this important planetary defense initiative. What budget cuts has Trump proposed for NASA? According to reports by Time and ArcsTechnia, President Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget proposal includes a 24% reduction in NASA's overall funding, dropping it from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion, which is also the lowest since 2015. More concerning is the nearly 50% cut to the Science Mission Directorate, reducing its budget from $7.5 billion to $3.9 billion. This drastic reduction hampers and fiddles with numerous scientific programs, including planetary defense efforts like the NEO Surveyor mission . How does this impact the planetary defense system? The NEO Surveyor mission is NASA's next step in planetary defense, aiming to detect and characterise near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could be a possible threat to our planet. By operating in infrared wavelengths, it can identify asteroids that are invisible to optical telescopes. Delays or cancellations of this mission would leave Earth vulnerable to potential impacts from undetected asteroids. The budget has been partially restored In response to the proposed budget cuts, the House Appropriations Committee has partially restored funding for the NEO Surveyor mission, allocating $94.9 million. While this is a step in the right direction, it falls short of the $170 million, which NASA had requested to maintain the mission's timeline. The committee has urged NASA to provide a revised launch schedule that ensures the mission proceeds without further delays, as reported by Space News. The proposed budget cuts impact beyond planetary defense systems. Various other programs, such as the Mars Sample Return mission, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and the Space Launch System, are also on the edge. The Politico reported that former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticised the proposed budget cuts, likening them to attacking the agency with "a chainsaw and a meat-ax." He warned that such drastic reductions would severely harm NASA's core scientific research and technological development, potentially plunging the agency "into a dark age."
Miami Herald
11-05-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
The researchers charged with defending the planet against asteroids
In December, astronomers identified that the asteroid YR4 had a small but not insignificant chance of striking Earth in 2032, a scenario that experts postulated could have more explosive potential than 500 Hiroshima nuclear bombs. Researchers reclassified YR4 as a non-threat in February, but the interim period when the asteroid was considered a threat, was the first time that the International Asteroid Warning Network had been activated to respond to a threat since its formation in 2014. "The fact is that humanity does have a system that has been put in place in the last decade, essentially, and it worked for YR4," said Danica Remy, president of the Mill Valley-based B612 Foundation, a nonprofit focused on identifying near-Earth objects (NEOs) that pose a threat to humanity. The global apparatus of researchers and cosmologists had formed in 2013 in the wake of an exploding meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia, that shattered glass for miles around. "We did not see that one coming," said Katie Kumamoto, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor. "There was no warning until there was actually a fireball in the sky being caught on all of those dashboard cameras on people's cars. I think that was a big wake-up call." Though astronomers have known about the threat posed by NEOs since the 1970s, efforts to catalogue potentially dangerous asteroids and meteors have only seriously materialized in the past decade, according to researchers from LLNL, the Marin County-based Asteroid Institute and NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. The Planetary Defense Coordination Office has identified 873 NEOs larger than one kilometer, a size that could be "a disaster of the scale of anything we've seen," according to Planetary Defense Officer Emeritus Lindley Johnson, who established the office in 2016. Another 11,266 NEOs have been identified that are large enough to wipe out entire cities if they landed in a metropolitan area, Johnson added. Johnson said NASA's catalogue has now identified more than 95% of NEOs that pose a threat to Earth. "Even though we now feel we've got a good handle on the population of large near-Earth asteroids, we're still working on understanding what the smaller population is," Johnson said. "We now have this tasking from NASA to find everything that's larger than 140 meters in size." The last major asteroid impact on Earth was the Tunguska Event in 1908 in Siberia, where an asteroid, estimated to be between 50-100 meters in diameter, exploded in the Earth's atmosphere and flattened 2,000 square kilometers of forest. Asteroids of that size are estimated to strike Earth once every 200-300 years, while asteroids larger than one kilometer strike Earth once every 500,000 years on average, according to the University of Arizona. The International Asteroid Warning System's researchers, recognizing that an asteroid impact is an inevitability rather than a possibility, have worked to develop numerous strategies to deploy against an asteroid whose trajectory is aligned with Earth. Some of these strategies have already been tested. On Sept. 26, 2022, NASA successfully redirected the asteroid Dimorphos as part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) using the strategy of a kinetic impactor - a fancy way of saying scientists crashed into an asteroid and changed its trajectory. The DART mission was a huge step in the planetary defense field, proving that the kinetic impactor could be utilized in the future. "Just changing the speed at which something is moving in orbit, that changes the orbit forever in the future," Johnson said. "The orbital shape, size of the orbit, and where it's going is all determined by the orbital velocity around the sun." Like a real-world game of Galaga, the kinetic impactor strategy works for smaller space rocks, however, other larger asteroids require more intense interventions. Asteroid Institute co-founder Ed Lu and astronaut Stanley G. Love invented the "gravity tractor" method, where, if given enough time, a spacecraft could be placed near an asteroid's gravitational field, "fine-tuning" its orbital trajectory safely away from Earth, Remy said. But what if the asteroid is too large for a kinetic impactor and scientists are too late to identify an impending impact? At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Kumamoto and other researchers are working on a solution: nuclear deflection. For this strategy, a nuclear explosive device would be triggered near an asteroid, sending it off its orbital path and ablating material from its surface. "Because there's just so much energy in a nuclear explosive device, we would be able to apply a much bigger push to the asteroid than we could get from a kinetic impactor," Kumamoto said about the "nuclear option" of planetary defense. "We don't understand that one as well as we understand option number one and option number two." Part of the reason for Kumamoto and other LLNL researchers' limited understanding of nuclear deflection is that international law prevents them. The Outer Space Treaty, approved by the United Nations in 1967, prohibits nuclear weapons in space and limits nations from testing military weapons on any celestial body. Space might be the final frontier, but no nation holds claim to it. In 2014, in the wake of the Chelyabinsk meteor, the United Nations brought greater focus to asteroid threats and planetary defense by sanctioning "International Asteroid Day" on June 30, a commemoration of the Tunguska Event in 1908. Originally founded by Remy's B612 Foundation, along with physicist Stephen Hawking, astronaut Rusty Schweickart and Queen guitarist Brian May in 2014, Asteroid Day is a call to action to keep humanity safe from what lies beyond our atmosphere - because in a world of natural disasters, one of the most devastating phenomena comes from space. "Unlike a hurricane or a tsunami or an earthquake or super volcano, there's really absolutely nothing we can do about those right now," Remy said. "Whereas with an asteroid impact, there are deflection options, and the work that we're doing is really important because warning time is everything." Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA tracks stadium-size asteroid passing near Earth: Here's how to watch it live
An asteroid about the length of three football fields is due to pass closely – but safely – by Earth in a matter of hours. Talk of asteroids coming too close for comfort to Earth may remind people of asteroid 2024 YR4, which became infamous earlier in 2025 when astronomers calculated a slight chance of it impacting with Earth. But while YR4 was eventually ruled out as a threat during its flyby in 2032, the asteroid passing Earth on Friday, May 9, never posed any danger to begin with. The gigantic space rock, which NASA compares to the size of a stadium, has a diameter of about 950 feet It may not be on a menacing trajectory, but it will still come close enough to Earth to warrant astronomers keeping a close eye on it as it whizzes by within about 2.6 million miles of our world. Here's everything to know about the asteroid, how the public can track it going by and why NASA keeps a close eye on inbound space rocks. The asteroid, dubbed 2002 JX8, makes close approaches to both Earth and Venus relatively often, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed by Caltech in California. It's last trip near Earth came about two years ago, May 27, 2023, and after the 2025 flyby, it'll be about another two years until we see 2002 JX8 again on April 15, 2027. The asteroid is much too small and far away to see without a telescope. But those who want to catch a glimpse of the asteroid, even if it's virtual, still have a chance. The Virtual Telescope Project plans to stream the event live on YouTube. The video won't show the asteroid itself, but it will allow viewers to distinguish 2002 JX8 as a tiny dot moving past stars that appear as even tinier dots in the background. The organization will go live at 4:30 p.m. ET. Here's where to watch it: The asteroid 2002 JX8 is large enough for NASA to deem it as "potentially hazardous" space object. The JPL lab tracks any asteroids or comets with orbits that will bring them within 4.6 million miles of Earth, or 19.5 times the distance to the moon. Its Asteroid Watch dashboard displays the date of the next five closest approaches, as well as each object's approximate diameter and its distance from Earth. After asteroid 2002 JX8, the next four asteroids slated to pass by Earth are relatively small – no bigger than a house. Any object larger than about 150 meters (about 492 feet) that can approach the Earth to within this distance becomes potentially hazardous, according to the lab. Most asteroids orbit within the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. But some follow paths that circulate into the inner solar system, including so-called near-Earth asteroids, according to NASA. YR4 and its much larger cousin, the equally infamous Apophis were the most alarming space rocks astronomers have discovered and studied for decades. Now that they have been ruled out as threats to Earth, astronomers still studying such imposing space rocks could help the world's space agencies prepare to mount a planetary defense if the need ever arose. NASA and the European Space Agency both plan to send uncrewed spacecraft to observe Apophis in the years ahead to map and study its surface to gain further insights into near-Earth asteroids. Protecting Earth from incoming space rocks could look a little like the test NASA pulled off in 2022 when it demonstrated that it was possible to nudge an incoming asteroid out of harm's way by slamming a spacecraft into one as part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART. As of October, a craft from the European Space Agency is on the way to get an up-close look at the asteroid's remnants. NASA is additionally working on an asteroid-hunting telescope known as the NEO Surveyor to find near-Earth objects capable of causing significant damage. Now set to launch no earlier than 2027, the telescope is designed to discover 90% of asteroids and comets that are 460 feet in size or larger and come within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit. Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@ This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: NASA tracks stadium-size asteroid passing near Earth: How to watch
Newsweek
01-05-2025
- Science
- Newsweek
Asteroids: NASA Tracking House-Sized Space Rock Near Earth
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. NASA has been tracking a house-sized asteroid in the vicinity of Earth that is hurtling through space at a zippy 42,300 miles per hour. Known as "2025 HM4," the asteroid's path brought it within a cosmically-small 477,000 miles of our home, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The space rock is estimated to be around 49 to 111 feet in diameter, according to the JPL's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). Asteroids are small, rocky masses left over from the formation of the solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. They're found in the main asteroid belt, orbiting around the sun between the paths of Mars and Jupiter. An illustration of an asteroid hovering over the Earth in space, with an inset image showing a house. An illustration of an asteroid hovering over the Earth in space, with an inset image showing a house. iStock / Getty Images Plus 2025 HM4 isn't the only space rock approaching the Earth this week. NASA is also tracking two airplane-sized asteroids—the "2024 BF" and "2025 GT1"), spanning around 110 to 140 feet in diameter—that will zoom past our planet on Thursday at a distance of around 2.2 to 2.6 million miles from the Earth. Another house-sized space rock—the "2025 HJ5," which measures around 48 feet—will also be going past at about 2.5 million miles from the Earth on Friday. Earlier this year in February, updated data from the CNEOS showed the Earth impact probability of the asteroid known as "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 noted at the time. Further studies on the asteroid's trajectory later that month brought the chance of Earth impact on December 22 in 2032 down to 0.004 percent. The space agency said that "NASA has significantly lowered the risk of near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4 as an impact threat to Earth for the foreseeable future" and "the range of possible locations the asteroid could be on Dec. 22, 2032, has moved farther away from the Earth." Earlier this month, the 2024 YR4 was estimated to be about 200 feet by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. "That's just about the height of a 15-story building," noted Andy Rivkin, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University who is the principal investigator of the Webb Director's Discretionary Time program used to study 2024 YR4, "All together, we have a better sense of what this building-sized asteroid is like. This in turn gives us a window to understand what other objects the size of 2024 YR4 are like, including the next one that might be heading our way," Rivkin said in a NASA blog post on April 2. The orbits of asteroids bring them within around 120 million miles of the sun. "The majority of near-Earth objects have orbits that don't bring them very close to Earth, and therefore pose no risk of impact," NASA notes. A small portion of them, however, known as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), do merit closer tracking. PHAs, which are around 460 feet in size, have orbits that bring them as close as within 4.6 million miles of the Earth's orbit around the sun, NASA notes. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about asteroids? Let us know via science@
