An asteroid will make a close encounter with the Earth tonight. it was discovered by sky watchers atop Mt. Lemmon only last week.
The space rock, designated 2026JH2, is about the size of a basketball court and will come to within 55,000 miles of the Earth. By comparison, the moon orbits the Earth at an average distance of 240,000 miles.
The anticipated close approach puts 2026JH2 much further away than GPS and communications satellites. Experts say there’s no chance of it entering Earth’s atmosphere or hitting our planet.
Carson Fuls with the Catalina Sky Survey says astronomers first noticed the object May 9th.
“Once they saw it and checked it against known objects and realized it was new, they submitted it to the minor planet center right away and they kept going with their night.”
The Catalina Sky Survey uses telescopes atop Mount Lemmon to detect and track near Earth objects. Fuls says this one is so small you’ll need a telescope to see it before it passes into the daytime sky tomorrow morning.
One reason why the Survey discovered the asteroid within only days of it passing Earth is due to its small size. Fuls notes if 2026JH2 was larger, it would have been spotted sooner and at a greater distance.
Observers with the Catalina Sky Survey have scanned space for near Earth objects for almost 25 years. They have counterparts in Australia who are also looking out for space rocks above the southern Hemisphere.
