Asteroid 2026 TP6 Passes 219,000 km From Earth
According to NASA's JPL, the roughly 11-meter object will be closest to Earth on October 15 at 1:57 a.m. Serbian time, about 0.6 of the distance to the Moon.
Asteroid 2026 TP6 will pass Earth on the night of October 14 to 15, at a nominal distance of about 219,000 kilometers from the center of the planet. According to the close-approach database of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), closest approach comes on October 14 at 23:57 UTC, which is 1:57 a.m. on October 15 Central European Summer Time.
That distance is about 0.6 of the average distance to the Moon, so the object will pass closer to Earth than the Moon does. Spaceweather.com, which tracks close asteroid flybys, likewise lists 0.6 lunar distances.
What does the JPL database say?
JPL lists the following values for this flyby:
- the nominal distance is 0.001465 astronomical units, with an uncertainty range from 0.001442 to 0.001488, or roughly 215,800 to 222,600 kilometers
- the velocity relative to Earth is 10.30 kilometers per second, about 37,000 kilometers per hour
- the timing uncertainty for the moment of closest approach is about 38 minutes
Even at the lower end of that range, the asteroid stays more than 215,000 kilometers from Earth.
How big is the object and where does it come from?
The object’s absolute magnitude (designated H) is 27.47. On that basis, Spaceweather.com estimates the diameter at about 11 meters. The JPL database lists no measured diameter, so this is an estimate, not a measurement.
The asteroid was first observed only on October 6, 2026, and the latest observation entered in the database dates from October 9. Its orbit was calculated from 20 observations over a three-day arc, and the orbit uncertainty code is 7 on a scale of 0 to 9. The higher that code, the less well the orbit is determined, and new observations can shift the calculated values.
The object belongs to the Aten group. These are asteroids with a semi-major axis smaller than one astronomical unit, in this case 0.978, whose orbits cross Earth’s. Its eccentricity is 0.347, its orbital inclination is 3.57 degrees, and one trip around the Sun takes 353 days. The minimum distance between its orbit and Earth’s is 0.00149 astronomical units, about 223,000 kilometers.
What else is passing Earth this week?
According to Spaceweather.com, 2026 TP6 is not the only one. The same portal lists three more objects:
- 2026 TO8, on October 11, at 3.5 lunar distances, about 10 meters across
- 2022 UP6, on October 15, at 2.6 lunar distances, about 8 meters across
- 2026 TS, on October 18, at 2.4 lunar distances, about 54 meters across
On October 11, 2026, the same portal counts 2,349 known potentially hazardous asteroids and states that none is on a collision course with Earth.
What this data does not prove
The figures for 2026 TP6 are a calculation, not a measurement of the flyby itself. The orbit rests on only three days of observations, which is why there is an uncertainty range in both distance and timing. The 11-meter diameter is one portal’s estimate, not the result of an official measurement. The 0.00149 astronomical unit gap between the orbits describes the geometry of the orbits and does not predict future passes, which only a more precise orbit could reveal.
