NASA is Monitoring a Dangerous Bus-Sized Asteroid with Potential for Earth Flyby

NASA is Monitoring an Asteroid comparable in size to a school bus is currently on a trajectory towards Earth, passing by at a distance that is twice as close as that of our moon today.

NASA Designated it as 2025 AB, this asteroid is among the first few to be identified in the new year, with a diameter ranging from 32.8 to 72.2 feet.

For context, the typical length of an American school bus is approximately 35 to 40 feet.

According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, 2025 AB is anticipated to approach our planet at a distance of roughly 95,200 miles on January 3. In comparison, the moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 238,900 miles.

The asteroid is expected to travel by at a velocity of approximately 11.33 km/s, equivalent to about 25,300 mph, which is significantly faster than the speed of the fastest bullets. According to Jay Tate, director of the U.K.’s Spaceguard Centre observatory, asteroids are remnants of a planet that never formed, orbiting the sun in the main asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. Due to their relatively small size, asteroids can be easily perturbed, leading to the possibility of their orbits intersecting with those of planets.

Certain asteroids are further categorized as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) or potentially hazardous objects (PHOs). These are defined as those that approach within approximately 4.6 million miles of Earth and possess a diameter of no less than 460 feet.

According to Martin Barstow, a professor of astrophysics and space science at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, a PHA is characterized by an orbit that intersects the Earth’s path around the sun at a distance of less than 0.05 astronomical units (1 AU being the distance from the Earth to the Sun), which equates to just over 4.5 million miles.