A newly discovered asteroid roughly the size of one to two school buses is set to make an unusually close pass by Earth on Monday, but astronomers say there is absolutely no reason for panic.
The asteroid, designated 2026JH2, will fly within about 91,593 kilometers — roughly 56,900 miles — of Earth at its closest approach, according to the European Space Agency and NASA tracking data. That distance is only about one quarter of the space separating Earth from the moon. While that sounds alarmingly close in cosmic terms, scientists stress the object poses no threat to the planet.
Astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Survey in Tucson, Arizona, first detected the asteroid on May 10. It belongs to a category known as Apollo asteroids, meaning its orbit around the sun intersects with Earth’s orbital path.
The closest pass is expected shortly before 6 p.m. Eastern Time Monday.
To put the distance into perspective, the asteroid will still remain more than twice as far away as many geosynchronous satellites that orbit Earth every day providing telecommunications, GPS, and weather monitoring services.
Richard Binzel, an MIT planetary scientist and creator of the Torino Scale used to classify asteroid impact risks, said this kind of flyby actually happens far more often than most people realize.
“2026JH2 will pass safely by the Earth,” Binzel explained. “Car-sized objects pass between the Earth and the Moon every week.”
He added that objects roughly this size move through Earth’s neighborhood several times every year, but advances in telescope technology now allow astronomers to detect many objects that previously would have passed completely unnoticed.
The asteroid’s exact size remains uncertain because telescopes initially only measure visible brightness, not physical dimensions directly. Scientists currently estimate 2026JH2 measures somewhere between 50 and 100 feet wide.
That range matters because the object’s potential destructive power would vary dramatically if it ever entered Earth’s atmosphere.
At the lower end of estimates, it would resemble the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, shattering windows and injuring over 1,000 people through shockwaves. At the higher end, it would approach the size of the object responsible for the famous Tunguska explosion over Siberia in 1908, which flattened vast stretches of forest.
Fortunately, none of that applies here because 2026JH2 will not come remotely close to entering Earth’s atmosphere.
Still, the flyby serves as another reminder of how much activity constantly occurs in Earth’s cosmic neighborhood — and how incomplete humanity’s asteroid tracking systems still are.
Scientists estimate astronomers have identified only about 1% of near-Earth objects in the same size range as 2026JH2. That means countless similar asteroids remain undetected until they briefly become visible during close approaches.
Jean-Luc Margot, a planetary scientist at UCLA, noted that planetary defense capabilities are currently weaker than they once were because key radar infrastructure has degraded. The collapse of the famous Arecibo Observatory in 2020 and repairs at NASA’s Goldstone radar facility have reduced scientists’ ability to precisely track incoming objects.
“Without radar data, we are less capable of assessing impact risk,” Margot warned.
Looking ahead, astronomers are already preparing for a much more dramatic close encounter in 2029 when the massive asteroid Apophis — at least ten times larger than 2026JH2 — will pass within just 20,000 miles of Earth. That flyby will be so close that millions of people across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East will likely be able to see it with the naked eye.
Even then, scientists currently say Apophis also poses no collision threat.
