NASA Tracks Airplane-Sized Asteroid Flying Toward Earth at 46,908 MPH. NASA is monitoring an asteroid, officially named 2025 OW, about 220 feet in size, expected to pass by Earth on Monday, July 28 at a distance of 390,000 miles—about 1.6 times farther than the Moon.
Though it’s moving fast, experts say this flyby is routine and poses no threat. NASA’s Ian O’Neill emphasized: “If there was any danger, we would issue alerts. This is a normal event.” Davide Farnocchia from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Studies office added: “Close approaches happen all the time—it’s part of the solar system.”
2025 OW won’t be visible even with binoculars, but NASA is also looking ahead to a more exciting event: asteroid Apophis, which will pass just 20,000 miles from Earth on April 13, 2029, closer than some satellites. It was once thought to pose a risk, but NASA has since ruled out any danger for at least a century.
Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that orbit within 120 million miles of the Sun and can pass near Earth. NASA continually tracks them to predict future paths and assess any potential risks.
