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NASA is monitoring a bus-sized asteroid that’s hurtling towards Earth at more than 38,500 miles per hour, according to the space agency's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
Estimated to span some 41 feet across, the space rock known as “2026 AZ2” is projected to make its closest approach today at a cosmically slight 217,000 miles from the Earth.
2026 AZ2 is not the only asteroid within the vicinity of our planet today. NASA is also tracking a plane-sized asteroid known as “2026 AR1” with a diameter of around 69 feet. This space rock is due to come as close as within 702,000 miles from the Earth.
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Asteroids are small, rocky masses left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. They are concentrated in the main asteroid belt, which lies around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Ao-called "near-Earth objects" are asteroids whose orbits bring them within 120 million miles of the sun and into the Earth’s “orbital neighborhood.”
Last week, astronomers reported discovering the fastest-spinning asteroid on record, which measures over 0.3 miles in diameter and rotates about once every two minutes. Known as “2025 MN45,” this asteroid is around 2,300 feet across and spans nearly the size of eight football fields.
The record-breaking space rock is one of 19 “super- and ultra-fast-rotating” asteroids found among around 1,900 asteroids that were found for the first time last June.
Last year in February, data from the CNEOS showed that the impact probability of an asteroid known as “2024 YR4” in 2032 was at 3.1 percent, which was “the highest impact probability NASA has ever recorded for an object of this size or larger,” the space agency said at the time.
But further observations found that “the object poses no significant impact risk to Earth in 2032 and beyond."
“The majority of near-Earth objects have orbits that don’t bring them very close to Earth, and therefore pose no risk of impact,” the space agency notes.
However, a small portion of them, known as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), do require closer tracking. PHAs have orbits that bring them as close as within 4.6 million miles of the Earth’s orbit around the sun, according to NASA.
Despite the number of PHAs out in our solar system, none are likely to hit our planet any time soon.
"The 'potentially hazardous' designation simply means over many centuries and millennia the asteroid's orbit may evolve into one that has a chance of impacting Earth. We do not assess these long-term, many-century possibilities of impact," Paul Chodas, manager of the CNEOS, previously told Newsweek.
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