IAU/Minor Planet Center
The green line shows the trajectory of 2025 TF, which almost hit Earth
A tangent closer to Earth than the Porto-Algarve distance: 430 km that “saved” us from an asteroid.
A 430 km from Earth, an asteroid has just passed a “flyby” to our planet and become second closest recorded passage to this day (only surpassed by 2020 VT4, which passed just 368 kilometers from Earth 5 years ago).
Now, the 2025 TFpassed over Antarctica at 00:47:26 UTC on Wednesday, October 1, at an altitude of about 428 kilometersexplains . And it was indeed a tangent: the cover illustration shows that the asteroid deviated from Earth just in time to miss it.
But there was no reason to worry: Even if it had hit the planet, the 2025 TF would not pose any danger, explain the scientists, who only detected the phenomenon after it had happened.
The rock measures only between 1 and 3 meters in diameter, which would mean, at most, a bright spectacle in the sky and perhaps a small meteorite lost in Antarctica.
The Kitt Peak-Bok Observatory, in Arizona (USA), was the first to report the event, at 6:36 UTC, but previous data from the Catalina Sky Survey revealed that the object had been captured two hours after its closest approach.
Currently, the 2025 TF is heading at high speed towards deep space… but it should get closer again in the future. This asteroid seems to like Earth, but our planet doesn’t let itself be caught: this time, this rock should become 8 million kilometerswhich is equivalent to 21 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
