Watch a basketball-court-size asteroid safely pass close to Earth on Monday
The Virtual Telescope Project will stream a view of the close approach beginning around 3:45 p.m. EDT on Monday.
Asteroid 2026 JH2 and Earth as seen on NASA's NEO Earth Close Approaches database, as of Monday, May 18, 2026. (Image credit: NASA JPL)
A recently discovered asteroid about the size of a commercial airplane will safely pass close to Earth on Monday as astronomers track its movements.
Asteroid 2026 JH2 is estimated to be about 50 to 108 feet in diameter and was first discovered on May 10 by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona, part of the Catalina Sky Survey, a NASA-funded project.
With an estimated size of 50 to 108 feet, or 15 to 33 meters, the asteroid is comparable to the size of a basketball court, a commercial airplane wingspan or a blue whale.
According to the Virtual Telescope Project, the asteroid will pass more than 56,900 miles from Earth, about 24% of the average lunar distance, Monday evening.
Astronomy experts stress there is no chance of Asteroid 2026 JH2 hitting Earth. Harvard University Astrophysics Avi Loeb gave the asteroid a zero on his object classification scale.
Asteroid 2026 JH2 will reach its closest distance to Earth just before 6 p.m. EDT.
The Virtual Telescope Project will stream a view of the close approach from its telescopes in Italy. The livestream is scheduled to begin around 3:45 p.m. EDT on Monday.
Asteroid 2026 JH2 won’t make another close approach to Earth until 2090, according to the European Space Agency’s Near-Earth Objects Coordination Centre.
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