African elephant-sized asteroid 2025 UK9
0.8 LD · ~4 m
Drawn to scale.
Silhouette: Chuanxin Yu, PhyloPic (CC0)
2025 UK9 passes inside the Moon's orbit, about 315,208 km from Earth's centre (0.8× the distance to the Moon). It is 2–6 m across (estimated). If a rock this size hit Earth, it would burn up as a bright fireball high in the atmosphere; at most, small meteorites reach the ground. Astronomers spot one this size passing inside the Moon's orbit about 100 times a year, and many more pass unseen. It misses Earth on this pass. NASA's Sentry impact monitoring gives it about a 1 in 6,300 chance of hitting Earth on a later pass between 2040 and 2125; odds like these usually drop to zero as more observations come in.
For the background, read Impact risk in Asteroids.
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