An asteroid flew past Earth, closer than the ISS's orbit.

(Dan Tri Newspaper) - An asteroid named 2025 TF recently flew past Earth at an altitude of only 428km, equivalent to the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS).

The diagram illustrates the path of asteroid 2025 TF (green line) as it flies past Earth (image: IAU/Little Planet Center).

This is one of the rare occasions in human history that an extraterrestrial object has been observed approaching Earth so closely, but fortunately, no collision occurred.

The asteroid, named 2025 TF, passed past Antarctica at 00:47:26 UTC on October 1st at an altitude of approximately 428 km. This distance falls within the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS), which ranges from 370 to 460 km.

That's a fairly close distance, but not the closest we know of. The record for the closest approach to Earth belongs to an asteroid called 2020 VT4. It flew past at a distance of just 368km in November 2020.

Quite a few meteoroids fly past us at very close distances, but thankfully they have never collided with our planet. Occasionally, some meteoroids make contact with the atmosphere, burn off some of their mass, and then glide along like a stone on water.

However, there are also asteroids that come much closer, including the asteroid that actually crashed into Earth and caused the extinction event about 66 million years ago.

Of course, that's just one of the many unusual asteroid impacts associated with the event we know about. It's quite possible that in its 4.5 billion-year history, Earth has experienced other collisions that may have had even more devastating effects.

Asteroid 2025 TF, hours after its closest approach to Earth (image: ESA/Las Cumbres Observatory).

However, even if it were to collide with Earth, 2025 TF wouldn't be anything to worry about. This asteroid is only 1 to 3 meters wide, so at most it would only create a beautiful light show for anyone observing it, and would likely leave a small impact crater on Earth's icy continent.

What's even more remarkable is that this asteroid was only detected after it had already flown past Earth. The Kitt Peak-Bok Observatory in Arizona was the first to record the event, at 06:36 UTC, but data was later traced back to the Catalina Observatory, which recorded the event just two hours after its closest flyby.

Although 2025 TF is currently hurtling through the shadows of space, it has the potential to return and fly past us once more.

According to NASA's estimates of its future orbit, it will return close to us in April 2087, but this time it will be at a greater distance, about 8 million kilometers from Earth, or about 21 times farther than the distance from Earth to the Moon.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/khoa-hoc/tieu-hanh-tinh-bay-suot-qua-trai-dat-gan-hon-ca-quy-dao-iss-20251009023502925.htm