Overview
- Asteroid (152637) 1997 NC1 will pass about 2.5–2.56 million kilometres from Earth on Saturday, June 27, 2026, on a trajectory that agencies say poses no impact risk.
- Space agencies and observatories confirm the flyby is safe and have ruled out any chance of collision for the near term.
- Amateur observers with small telescopes or large binoculars may see the object near magnitude 10 if they have dark skies, but a bright nearby Moon and local sky conditions will limit visibility for many viewers.
- NASA/JPL plans radar observations from Goldstone on June 24, 25 and 27 to narrow uncertainties in diameter, albedo and orbit, but high-resolution imaging is constrained by the 2020 collapse of Arecibo and some Goldstone dishes being offline.
- The asteroid is an Aten-type object roughly 0.7–1.6 kilometres wide and classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid because of its size and orbit, making this pass a valuable data point for planetary defense and for improving models of similar near-Earth objects.