{"id":109168,"date":"2025-09-02T13:10:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T13:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/109168\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T13:10:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T13:10:10","slug":"nasa-warns-a-huge-asteroid-the-size-of-a-commercial-jet-will-skim-past-earth-tomorrow-at-blistering-speeds-of-over-28000mph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/109168\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA warns a HUGE asteroid the size of a commercial jet will skim past Earth tomorrow at blistering speeds of over 28,000mph"},"content":{"rendered":"

An asteroid the size of a commercial jet plane will skim past Earth tomorrow, NASA<\/a> has warned.<\/p>\n

The 38-metre (124ft) space rock will make an exceptionally close pass of our planet at blistering speeds over 28,000 miles per hour (45,000 km\/h).<\/p>\n

At its closest point, the asteroid will be just 35,465 miles (218,009 kilometres) from the surface of Earth.<\/p>\n

That is just over half the distance between Earth and the Moon.<\/p>\n

The asteroid, dubbed 2025 QD8, will make its pass of Earth at 15:56 BST tomorrow afternoon.<\/p>\n

At almost 40 metres in diameter, this chunk of debris has the potential to be a ‘city killer’ if it were to collide with the planet.<\/p>\n

However, scientists say there is no reason to be worried.<\/p>\n

According to NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), 2025 QD8 will harmlessly whizz past Earth, without any risk of collision.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A huge asteroid the size of a commercial jet plane will skim past Earth tomorrow afternoon, NASA has warned (stock image)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The asteroid, dubbed 2025 QD8, will pass within 35,465 miles (218,009 kilometres) from the surface of Earth at 15:56 BST tomorrow afternoon. Pictured: 2025 QD8’s orbit (grey) intersecting with Earth’s orbit (blue)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Following its discovery earlier this year, the asteroid 2025 QD8 was spotted by a group of amateur astronomers from the Virtual Telescope Project.<\/p>\n

Using a 17-inch telescope, the astronomers managed to capture an image of 2025 QD8 while it was 2.4 million miles (3.9 million km) from Earth.<\/p>\n

This confirmed that the asteroid is between 17 and 38 metres (55-125 feet) wide, and is travelling directly towards Earth.<\/p>\n

The size of the asteroid is an estimate based on the amount of light reflecting off its surface, which means that measurements cannot be entirely certain.<\/p>\n

If the asteroid is made of a particularly dark or unreflective material, then it could be nearer to the higher end of the estimate range or potentially even larger.<\/p>\n

However, even at the lower end of its estimated range, the asteroid still carries a huge destructive potential.<\/p>\n

Dr Shyam Balaji, an astrophysicist from King’s College London, told Daily Mail: ‘It could cause significant local effects, though not global devastation.’<\/p>\n

In 2013, an 18-metre (59ft) meteor exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia<\/a>, near the border with Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The asteroid was spotted by the Virtual Telescope Project, which managed to take an image of the rock while it was\u00a02.4 million miles (3.9 million km) from Earth.<\/p>\n

\"Estimated <\/p>\n

Estimated to be between 17 and 38 metres across (5-125 feet), 2025 QD8 is a similar size to the 20-metre Chelyabinsk meteor (pictured), which exploded with 30 times the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima\u00a0<\/p>\n

Asteroid 2025 QD8 <\/p>\n

Estimated size:\u00a017-38 metres<\/p>\n

Speed: 28,000 miles per hour<\/p>\n

Absolute magnitude:\u00a025.972\u00a0<\/p>\n

Closest pass to Earth: 35,465 miles<\/p>\n

Time of closest pass: September 3, 15:56 BST<\/p>\n

Risk of hitting Earth: None\u00a0<\/p>\n

Source: NASA\/JPL Small-Body Database\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

<!- – ad: https:\/\/mads.dailymail.co.uk\/v8\/us\/sciencetech\/none\/article\/other\/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 – -><\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

The resulting explosion was 30 times more powerful than the atomic bomb<\/a> dropped on Hiroshima, producing a shockwave that travelled twice around the world.<\/p>\n

Directly beneath the explosion, 28 miles (45km) above the ground, the heat was so intense that people were left with burns and retinal damage.<\/p>\n

Around 1,500 people were injured and over 3,600 homes were damaged, even though only 0.05 per cent of the original rock made it to the ground.<\/p>\n

With a potential size up to 38 metres in diameter, 2025 QD8 has the potential to be even more destructive – possibly even ranking it as a ‘city killer’ size asteroid.<\/p>\n

Dr Balaji adds: ‘Larger examples, like the Tunguska event in 1908, flattened thousands of square kilometres of forest.<\/p>\n

‘An impact over a populated area could therefore be serious, but events of this scale remain rare.’<\/p>\n

However, although the asteroid will pass extremely close to the planet, it poses no threat whatsoever to Earth.<\/p>\n

Thanks to careful study by the network of planetary defence telescopes, astronomers are able to make very precise calculations of asteroids’ orbits.<\/p>\n

\"Thanks <\/p>\n

Thanks to precise calculations of the asteroid’s orbit (illustrated), scientists are certain the 2025 QD8 will not hit Earth tomorrow or at any other point in the future\u00a0<\/p>\n

This means we know with a very high level of certainty that 2025 QD8 will not hit Earth or the moon.<\/p>\n

Although NASA and ESA have detected tens of thousands of near-earth objects, calculations show it is highly unlikely that a dangerous asteroid will hit Earth in the next 100 years.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, despite its close passage, the asteroid won’t be visible to the naked eye.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘It will be far too faint, and even telescopes would need to be well-equipped and precisely aimed,’ says Dr Balaji.<\/p>\n

However, budding astronomers will still have an opportunity to watch this close encounter.<\/p>\n

The Virtual Telescope Project will host a free live stream of the asteroid’s passage, starting from midnight tonight, which you can watch at this link.<\/a><\/p>\n

The live stream will feature views of the approaching asteroid gathered by the group’s suite of robotic telescopes located in Manciano, Italy.<\/p>\n

WHAT COULD WE DO TO STOP AN ASTEROID COLLIDING WITH EARTH?<\/a><\/p>\n

Currently, NASA would not be able to deflect an asteroid if it were heading for Earth but it could mitigate the impact and take measures that would protect lives and property.<\/p>\n

This would include evacuating the impact area and moving key infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Finding out about the orbit trajectory, size, shape, mass, composition and rotational dynamics would help experts determine the severity of a potential impact.<\/p>\n

However, the key to mitigating damage is to find any potential threat as early as possible.<\/p>\n

NASA and the European Space Agency completed a test which slammed a refrigerator-sized spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos.<\/p>\n

The test is to see whether small satellites are capable of preventing asteroids from colliding with Earth.<\/p>\n

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) used what is known as a kinetic impactor technique\u2014striking the asteroid to shift its orbit.<\/p>\n

The impact could change the speed of a threatening asteroid by a small fraction of its total velocity, but by doing so well before the predicted impact, this small nudge will add up over time to a big shift of the asteroid’s path away from Earth.<\/p>\n

This was the first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defence.<\/p>\n

The results of the trial are expected to be confirmed by the Hera mission in December 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An asteroid the size of a commercial jet plane will skim past Earth tomorrow, NASA has warned. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[97,125,92,90,124,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-109168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-earth","10":"tag-nasa","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-sciencetech","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}