{"id":340715,"date":"2025-12-10T09:09:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T09:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/340715\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T09:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T09:09:16","slug":"nasa-tracking-plane-sized-asteroid-approaching-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/340715\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Tracking Plane-Sized Asteroid Approaching Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA<\/a> is monitoring an asteroid<\/a>\u2014”2025 XM”\u2014that is expected to pass within 295,000 miles of Earth<\/a> today, December 9, according to data from the agency\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).<\/p>\n

The visiting space<\/a> rock is hurtling through the solar system at a zippy 9,753 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

With an estimated diameter of 84 feet\u2014roughly the size of a commercial airplane\u20142025 XM falls well below the size threshold NASA uses to define a potentially hazardous object. <\/p>\n

Objects that pass within 4.6 million miles of Earth and measure more than 150 meters in diameter are classified by NASA as “potentially hazardous.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For comparison, the average distance from Earth to the moon<\/a> is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers), meaning 2025 XM\u2019s approach will take it to just over 1.2 times the lunar distance.<\/p>\n

2025 XM is not the only asteroid whizzing through Earth’s backyard this week. According to NASA, the coming days will also see the 48-foot “2019 XN3” pass the Earth within a more relaxed 1,360,000 miles of us on December 10. <\/p>\n

Later that day, 1999 SF10\u2014a 140-feet-across space rock\u2014will get within around 1,950,000 miles of Earth.<\/p>\n

Do you have a tip on a science story that\u00a0Newsweek\u00a0should be covering? Do you have a question about asteroids? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA is monitoring an asteroid\u2014”2025 XM”\u2014that is expected to pass within 295,000 miles of Earth today, December 9,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[9480,6626,2300,7042,718,79,15850,193],"class_list":["post-340715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-asteroid","tag-astronomy","tag-earth","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-scientists","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}