Overview
- Asteroid 2026 JH2 passed about 57,000 miles from Earth on Monday in a close but harmless flyby well inside the Moon’s orbit, according to ESA and NASA data.
- Spotted on May 10 by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona, the object is estimated at roughly 15–35 meters across and was traveling near 9.1 kilometers per second.
- Observers tracked the pass with small telescopes, and Italy’s Virtual Telescope Project livestreamed the view as the asteroid brightened to about magnitude 11.5.
- The rock is an Apollo-class near-Earth asteroid that crosses Earth’s path and completes an orbit around the Sun in about 3.7–3.8 years, with future approaches expected at much greater distances.
- Researchers say the few days of warning highlight limits in finding small, fast objects, a challenge made harder by degraded radar assets, even as agencies fund better discovery surveys.