2 Airplane-Sized Asteroids to Make Close Approaches to Earth This Week

According to NASA's Asteroid Watch dashboard, five asteroids, one the size of a home and two the size of an airplane, will travel past Earth between September 6 and September 12.

The house-sized asteroid JA5 will be the first to visit the planet, passing by on September 6. It will pass nearly 3.17 million miles of Earth and will be seen for the first time in 2021. The asteroid, according to NASA, is around 59 feet in size, hence the resemblance to a house, reported by CBS News.

On September 8, two asteroids will pass close to Earth. The QC5, which has been compared to a plane, will be around 79 feet long, while the GE, which is about the size of a bus, will be about 26 feet long.

The asteroid, which is the size of an airliner, was discovered in 2023 and will pass within 2.53 million miles of Earth. The second asteroid was discovered in 2020 and will come within 3,560,000 kilometers of Earth.

QF6, the second airplane-sized asteroid detected in 2023, is around 68 feet in size. On September 10, it will pass Earth. This one will come the closest to Earth, going around 1.65 million miles.

(Photo: by JASON CONNOLLY/AFP via Getty Images)
Team members monitor the capsule's operations during NASA's first major asteroid sample recovery rehearsal for its OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security Regolith Explorer) mission, at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado, on June 27, 2023. OSIRIS-REx is the first US mission to capture a sample from the surface of an asteroid.

The final predicted asteroid will be the size of a bus and will pass Earth on September 12. This asteroid, which measures around 25 feet in diameter, was discovered in 2020 and given the designation RT2. It will be approximately 2,620,000 kilometers from Earth this week.

Not Dangerous

None of the asteroids are expected to be dangerous. Objects are considered "potentially hazardous" when they are within 4.6 million miles of Earth, which all of these asteroids are, but they must also be larger than 490 feet in size. None of the asteroids coming this week are anywhere close to that size.

The Asteroid Watch dashboard monitors asteroids and comets that are expected to make "relatively close approaches to Earth," according to NASA. NASA also maintains an "Eyes on Asteroids" webpage, which allows users to watch asteroids and comets in real-time across the galaxy due to an interactive depiction based on data from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Center for Near Earth Object Studies.

The most famous asteroid that came close to Earth was the asteroid 2012 DA14. This asteroid was about 45 meters in diameter and passed within 27,700 kilometers of Earth's surface on February 15, 2013. This was the closest an asteroid of this size has come to Earth since 1972.

Scientists are working on ways to deflect asteroids that pose a threat to Earth. One way to do this is to use a kinetic impactor. A kinetic impactor is a spacecraft that would be sent to collide with the asteroid, changing its course.