Asteroid 2026 TF59 passes Earth tonight at 369,000 km
Two new objects in NASA JPL's close approach database fly past Earth two days apart, and the second one passes closer than the Moon.
Asteroid 2026 TF59 passes Earth today, October 12, at about 369,000 kilometers. According to the close approach database of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), closest approach comes at 17:36 UTC, which is 7:36 p.m. Serbian time. Two days later 2026 TG9 follows, passing closer than the Moon.
What does the JPL database say about 2026 TF59?
A distance of 0.002467 astronomical units is slightly less than the average distance to the Moon, 384,400 kilometers. The object will pass about 15,000 kilometers inside the Moon’s orbit, but still in its neighborhood.
- relative speed to Earth is 7.0 kilometers per second, about 25,000 kilometers per hour
- the uncertainty in the time of closest approach is under one minute
- absolute magnitude H is 28.6
JPL gives no measured diameter. A magnitude of 28.6 describes a very faint object, so the body is about ten meters across or smaller. That is an estimate from brightness, not a measurement.
Why is 2026 TG9 more interesting?
The second new object in the database passes on Wednesday, October 14, at 6:57 a.m. Serbian time (4:57 UTC), at about 227,000 kilometers. That is 0.001519 astronomical units, or roughly 0.6 of the distance to the Moon. The uncertainty in the time of closest approach is 21 minutes, and the relative speed is 11.6 kilometers per second, about 42,000 kilometers per hour.
An absolute magnitude of 27.0 corresponds to a diameter of about 14 meters. Again this is an estimate based on brightness, since JPL does not provide a measured diameter.
The gap between flybys matters too this week: exactly 19 hours separate 2026 TG9 from the previously announced 2026 TP6. Asteroid 2026 TP6 passes on October 15 at 1:57 a.m. Serbian time, at about 219,000 kilometers and 10.3 kilometers per second, and its diameter is estimated at 11 meters. We covered it earlier, in the story on the flyby at 219,000 kilometers. In under a day, two bodies pass at roughly 0.6 of the distance to the Moon.
What else passes in the same window?
The database lists two more distant objects in the same period:
- 2026 TM35, October 13 at 18:31 UTC, at 0.00999 astronomical units, about 1.5 million kilometers, at 10.2 kilometers per second, with a diameter of about 10 meters
- 2022 UP6, October 15, at 2.6 times the distance to the Moon, with a diameter of about 8 meters and an uncertainty in the time of closest approach of more than nine days
A day earlier, on October 11, asteroid 2026 TP35, about 7 meters across, passed at 0.6 of the distance to the Moon at 14.6 kilometers per second. All of these bodies are far below the 140 meter threshold above which objects are considered potentially hazardous.
What this does not prove
None of these flybys is a warning of a collision. The listed values are trajectory calculations, not measurements of the passage itself, so they carry ranges of uncertainty, and for 2026 TG9 and 2026 TP6 the timing can shift by tens of minutes. Diameters are estimates derived from brightness, with the reflectivity of the surface unknown, so the real size could be larger or smaller. For 2026 TF59 the database has not calculated a diameter at all. New observations may change both the distances and the times.
