What's passing Earth
this week?

A close approach is when an asteroid passes near Earth. "Close" in astronomical terms can still mean hundreds of thousands of kilometres - no currently tracked asteroids are on a collision course with Earth. NASA monitors thousands of these near-Earth objects (NEOs) to assess any long-term risk.

A lunar distance (LD) is the average distance from Earth to the Moon - approximately 384,400 km. Astronomers use it as a convenient unit for measuring how close near-Earth objects pass. An asteroid at 1 LD is as far away as the Moon; at 0.5 LD, it is half that distance.

NASA classifies an asteroid as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) if it is estimated to be larger than 140 metres in diameter and its orbit brings it within 0.05 AU - about 7.5 million km, or 19.5 lunar distances - of Earth's orbit. Being classified as potentially hazardous does not mean an impact is imminent. It means the object warrants closer monitoring.

All data is fetched from NASA's Near Earth Object Web Service (NeoWs) API, maintained by NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The API is publicly available and updated continuously as new telescope observations come in.

This tracker fetches fresh data from NASA every 30 minutes. For real-time lookups, NASA's CNEOS website has the full catalogue.

NASA's planetary defence team tracks all known near-Earth objects. None of the asteroids currently listed are on an impact trajectory. No known object has more than a negligible probability of impact in the next 100 years.

No known asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. NASA's planetary defence programme continuously monitors all near-Earth objects and would have years - likely decades - of warning if any object posed a genuine threat. The asteroids shown on this tracker all pass safely by, often millions of kilometres away.

Several asteroids pass Earth most weeks - most are small and pose no risk. This tracker shows the next close approach at the top of the page with a live countdown, along with the full list of approaches in the coming days.

Small asteroids under about 25 metres usually burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the surface. Objects in the 25-140 metre range can cause local or regional damage - the 1908 Tunguska event flattened 2,000 km² of Siberian forest, and the object responsible was roughly 50 metres across. NASA classifies anything larger than 140 metres as potentially hazardous and tracks those objects closely. A kilometre-scale object would have global consequences, but none of that size are on any known impact trajectory.