Newly Discovered Neo Asteroid 2026 SA8 Close but Safe Approach

astrophyzix.com

6 points·UniverseToday··9 comments

The nearest approach is 0.988x Lunar Distance (379,868 km), 60 Earth radii out. The size is very roughly 6.7 meters, 22 feet. If it hit the atmosphere, the airburst would be about 5 kilotons. Airbursts like that happen every few years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_air_burst#After_1900

It won't come close to hitting our atmosphere.

Also, Wikipedia isn't a credible source. It's not even a secondary source. Always refer to official data.

New preliminary report on just discovered PHA is available too https://www.astrophyzix.com/2026/09/SWAN26Q-NEOCP-Report.htm...

It seems like every few months we find out our orbit is far more crowded than we thought.

It changes multiple times each day.

Is it possible that one day a dinosaur extinction size asteroid will be annouced on a collision course?

Is there some reason we would already know, or can these things just suddenly show up?

> Is it possible that one day a dinosaur extinction size asteroid will be annouced on a collision course?

Yes, but it gets less likely as we keep searching more of the sky.

You can never _really_ say it's impossible, there can always be a cosmic bullseye heading our way from way off in interstellar space that we can't see until it gets closer.

But there is still room for quite a few rocks in the solar system to have our name on them too, last I checked.

Another new object discovered by NASA and analysed by Astrophyzix is 2026 SX2 https://www.astrophyzix.com/p/orbital-refinement.html?m=1

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