Bus-Sized Asteroid Approaching Earth Today, NASA Reports
A bus-sized asteroid is zipping past the Earth this afternoon at a speed of 18,700 miles per hour.
's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
It will pass within about 917,000 miles of Earth before zooming back out into the solar system, and won't come close to us again until mid-2041.
There are asteroids other than 2025 CN in our area today, including 2025 CL3, which is also approaching Earth, though from a distance of over 2.2 million miles, roughly twice as far as 2025 CN.
Asteroids are rock-like objects that have no air, leftover from the solar system's formation approximately 4.6 billion years ago.
They are mainly found concentrated in the main asteroid belt, orbiting the sun between the paths of Mars and Jupiter.
Asteroids in the asteroid belt can occasionally be knocked off course, sending them hurtling into the inner solar system and potentially passing close to Earth.
"Scientists are always tracking Earth-crossing asteroids, whose paths intersect with Earth's orbit, and near-Earth asteroids that come close to Earth, within a distance of about 28 million miles, and might pose a potential impact threat," NASA explains on its website.
The asteroid belt isn't the only place in the solar system where you can find these space rocks. There are also asteroids called "trojans" that share the same orbit as planets in the solar system.
Jupiter has the most Trojan asteroids, but they can also be found in association with Mars, Neptune, and even Earth.
Asteroids can vary greatly in size, ranging from approximately 329 miles in diameter, as seen in the case of Vesta, which makes up about 9 percent of the total mass of all asteroids, to a few feet across, similar to the size of a typical pedestrian.
Fortunately, neither 2025 CN nor 2025 CL3, the asteroids that have visited Earth's orbit recently, pose any threat of colliding with Earth in the near future.
It's worth noting that a different story can be told about a 196-foot-wide asteroid that was first observed and recorded by NASA late last year.
in December 2032.
Scientists estimate that if it were to occur, the event would release a massive eight megatons of energy, equivalent to over 500 times the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
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