An asteroid the size of a jet crosses the earth this September 3, follow it live

A new asteroid about thirty meters will graze the earth, in the sense that it will pass twice closer to us than the moon is. It will even be possible to Follow your journey live here Thanks to the chain of The Virtual Telescop Project. The Vagabond star will go as close as possible tomorrow September 3 at 12:57 p.m. (Paris time), but the live will start this night at 1 a.m.

Thanks to The Virtual Telescop Project, follow the asteroid live

2025 QD8 (this is its name) “Caress” our planet at a distance of some 200,000 km, which is really very very little on the solar system scale. Rest assured, it presents no risk to us. Its diameter is estimated between 17 m and 38 m and it goes to 45,000 km/h, which is not a particularly high speed. As a reminder, our planet orbit at around 100,000 km/h around the sun and some shooting stars penetrate 200,000 km/h.

2025 QD8 will graze us at 45,000 km/h on September 3

Given its size and if its trajectory brought it there, the object would have the potential to create a nice spectacle in our atmosphere, probably by exploding in the sky, which will not fortunately be the case. For the record, the famous Toungouska event, a hundred years old and which devastated the tundra in Siberia over 100 km, measured between 50 m and 100 m only.

This asteroid presenting no threat to the earth, the program directed the Planetary Defense Coordination Office has not been activated. You should know that astronomers regularly discover small objects of less than 50 m, obviously more difficult to spot. Besides, quite little approach also near the planet Earth.

What about civic science in all of this?

For amateur astronomers, especially those with connected telescopes such as Unistellar Odyssey, of which We offer a test hereSmall observation campaigns will probably be set up on their dedicated sites … If you participate, put a small comment under this article.

Numériques settles in Beaugrenelle Paris for The most tech days : product demonstrations, use or purchase advice, exchanges with our journalists … Discover the full program here.