NASA is monitoring a house-sized asteroid that is speeding towards Earth at more than 26,200 miles per hour, according to the space agency’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
The space rock—which has been named “2026 BB4”—measures around 54 feet in diameter and is projected to make its closest approach to our planet at a cosmically slight 844,000 miles.
2026 BB4 is not the only asteroid whizzing through Earth’s backyard today. NASA is also tracking a plane-sized asteroid known as “2026 BJ1” with a diameter of around 220 feet.
2026 BJ1 is expected to come within 3.07 million miles from our planet, according to NASA.
Asteroids are small, rocky masses left over from the formation of the solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. They are located in the main asteroid belt, which lies around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Asteroids are categorized as “near-Earth objects” when their paths bring them to within 120 million miles of the sun and into the Earth’s “orbital neighborhood.”
Earlier in January, scientists discovered the fastest-spinning asteroid, which measures over 0.3 miles in diameter and rotates once every two minutes. This space rock—“2025 MN45”—measures around 2,300 feet across.
The record-breaking space rock is one of 19 “super- and ultra-fast-rotating” asteroids among around 1,900 asteroids that were found for the first time last June.
Last year in February, CNEOS data 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.
Further observations, however, led NASA to conclude 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.
But 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.
Despite the number of PHAs out in our solar system, none are likely to hit the Earth 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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