Two asteroids are passing close to Earth, but without any danger

2026 TG9 has already passed within 220 thousand kilometers of our planet at dawn, 2026 TP6 will get a little closer, reaching 210 thousand kilometres, at 2am tonight. In both cases there is no risk for the planet

An asteroid this close to Earth is a rare sight. If there are two asteroids within about twenty hours, the event becomes even more exceptional. And it is good to specify this, completely sure. 2026 TG9 and 2026 TP6 are two celestial bodies that are practically twins in size: they have very similar dimensions and share a rather close passage to our planet. The first, in truth, has already passed when it was dawn this morning in Italy, at 6:57, the second will arrive at 2 this night.

However, both do not represent any danger for our planet. 2026 TG9 passed at a distance of 0.001522 astronomical units (one astronomical unit equals 150 million kilometers, the distance between the center of the Sun and the center of the Earth, translated into kilometers the asteroid passed 220 thousand kilometers from our planet); 2026 TP6 will get a little closer, to 0.001463 astronomical units and therefore 210 thousand kilometers. To give an idea of ​​the distances, the Moon is 384 thousand kilometers from the Earth, so the two asteroids pass more or less halfway between us and our satellite.

The Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) estimated the size of 2026 TG9 between 11 and 24 meters in diameter, the Near-Earth Objects coordination center of the European Space Agency (ESA) calculated between 10 and 23 meters. 2026 TP6 is a little smaller (between 9.3 and 21 meters in diameter for NASA, between 9 and 20 meters for ESA). The speed of the first was calculated at around 11.6 kilometers per second, approximately 42 thousand kilometers per hour. In any case, they are rather small in size, much smaller than the minimum 50 meters in diameter of the so-called "city destroyers".