About this site
Asteroid Close-Approach Tracker
Real-time data on every near-Earth asteroid passing within 0.2 AU - presented clearly, without the drama.
Sean Barraclough
Web developer · UK
I'm a web developer with a long-standing interest in planetary science data. Not the romantic kind - the kind that wants to know exactly how close that asteroid actually came, and what the numbers mean.
I built this site because I kept looking for a clean, data-first view of upcoming close approaches and couldn't find one that felt right. The data is public, the interest is there - it just needed presenting properly.
What this site does
The tracker pulls live data from NASA's NeoWs (Near Earth Object Web Service) API, updated every 30 minutes. Every asteroid listed has a confirmed close approach within 0.2 AU of Earth - roughly 30 million kilometres, or about 78 times the Earth-Moon distance.
Alongside the live tracker, the site covers the underlying science: what near-Earth objects (NEOs) actually are, how NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) monitors them, what the Torino Scale measures, and what planetary defence looks like in practice.
The goal is a site that takes the subject seriously without overstating anything. None of the objects listed here are on a collision course with Earth. The monitoring exists precisely because we want to keep it that way.
Other projects
I also run auroratonight.space , a live aurora forecast tool that tracks the Kp index and geomagnetic activity for northern lights watchers. Same approach: public data, clean presentation, no fuss.
A note on the data
All asteroid data on this site comes directly from NASA's publicly available APIs. Nothing here is modelled, estimated, or extrapolated by me - I display what NASA publishes.
Close-approach distances change slightly as tracking improves. If a number on this site differs from what you saw last week, that reflects updated orbital calculations, not an error. The NASA data is always the authoritative source.
Transparency
Some pages on this site contain affiliate links to products on Amazon. If you buy something through one of those links, I earn a small commission at no cost to you. This only applies to the stargazing gear guides - it does not affect the asteroid data or any editorial content.
The site carries Google AdSense ads. Ad income doesn't influence what I write or which asteroids I show you. The data is the data.
Get in touch
The best place to reach me is Reddit. I'm u/SeanBarraclough . If you've spotted a data issue, have a question about how something works, or just want to say hello, that's the place.
Full bio and links
