House-sized asteroid zooms by Earth in close flyby

News
By Tariq Malik
published

The 49-foot-wide asteroid 2022 FB2 was discovered on March 26.

A newly-discovered asteroid about the size of a house is passing close by Earth on Monday (March 28) but is no cause for alarm. 

The asteroid, called 2022 FB2, is about 49 feet (15 meters) across and will approach within 93,400 miles (150,000 kilometers) when it whizzes by our planet, according to a NASA chart of asteroid flybys. For comparison, the average distance between the Earth and moon is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers).

Astronomers first detected 2022 FB2 on Saturday (March 26), according to a NASA database. 

This NASA graphic shows the path of the asteroid 2022 FB2 as it flew within 93,000 miles of Earth in a flyby on March 28, 2022. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Monday's flyby follows on the heels of another asteroid, called 2022 FD1, that passed within just 5,400 miles (8,700 kilometers) of Earth on Thursday (March 24). That asteroid was discovered by astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky, who announced the find on Twitter. Asteroid 2022 FD1 is a tiny space rock, with the largest estimates pegging it at about 12.1 feet (3.7 meters), according to a database maintained by NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. 

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Recently, Sárneczky also discovered an asteroid called 2022 EB5, which actually hit the Earth on March 11 and burned up over the Norwegian Sea. It was discovered just two hours before impact, with astronomers quickly making follow-up observations that allowed NASA's Scout impact hazard system to predict where and when 2022 EB5 would hit Earth's atmosphere.

"Tiny asteroids like 2022 EB5 are numerous, and they impact into the atmosphere quite frequently — roughly every 10 months or so," NASA's Paul Chodas, the director of CNEOS at JPL, said in a statement. "But very few of these asteroids have actually been detected in space and observed extensively prior to impact, basically because they are very faint until the last few hours, and a survey telescope has to observe just the right spot of sky at the right time for one to be detected."

Chodas and other scientists around the world regularly keep watch for what NASA calls "potentially hazardous asteroids" with orbits that bring them within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) of the Earth. 

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Tariq Malik
Tariq Malik
Editor-in-Chief

Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.