{"id":447861,"date":"2026-05-14T04:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/447861\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T04:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:18:09","slug":"newly-discovered-asteroid-to-make-close-pass-by-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/447861\/","title":{"rendered":"Newly discovered asteroid to make close pass by Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bus-sized space rock first spotted days ago will zip past Earth at roughly a quarter of the moon’s distance.<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 A newly discovered asteroid is on course to pass closer to Earth than many orbiting satellites next Monday, offering scientists a rare opportunity to study a near-Earth object at close range without launching a mission to reach it.<\/p>\n

The asteroid, designated 2026 JH2<\/a>, will pass Earth at a distance of about 56,700 miles on May 18. That puts it at just 24% of the average lunar distance, well within the orbit of many communications satellites.<\/p>\n

The asteroid was recently discovered by astronomers from the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona and the Farpoint Observatory in Eskridge, Kansas. It was first observed on May 10.<\/p>\n

Despite its proximity, scientists say there is no cause for alarm. Current calculations show no evidence it will hit Earth.<\/p>\n

Scientists estimate the asteroid measures between 50 and 115 feet across \u2014 roughly the same size as the object responsible for the Chelyabinsk airburst over Russia in 2013, which produced a shockwave that shattered windows across a wide swath of Siberia and injured more than 1,000 people, even though the asteroid itself disintegrated in the atmosphere before reaching the ground.<\/p>\n

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory classifies 2026 JH2 as an Apollo-class near-Earth object, meaning its orbit crosses Earth’s path around the sun.<\/p>\n

For those without access to a telescope, the Virtual Telescope Project will broadcast the flyby\u00a0<\/a>live online, beginning at 21:45 UTC (5:45 p.m. ET) on May 18, just after closest approach when the asteroid will be near peak brightness. The asteroid will not be visible to the naked eye.<\/p>\n

The flyby arrives three years before an even more closely watched event: on April 13, 2029, near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis \u2014 a 1,230-foot-wide rock once feared as a potential impact risk \u2014 will pass just 20,000 miles from Earth. Astronomers have ruled out any collision risk from Apophis for at least a century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bus-sized space rock first spotted days ago will zip past Earth at roughly a quarter of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,82],"class_list":["post-447861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}