The Asteroid Passing Earth This Week Has Scientists Watching Closely

On nights when an asteroid is scheduled to pass Earth, a certain type of silence is present. It’s not a storm warning’s dramatic silence. It’s more akin to the silence in a control room where everyone is already familiar with the script and is still going over every line. The coffee is cooling, the monitors are glowing, and someone is zooming in on a plot that appears to be a child’s scrawl until you realize it’s math explaining that a rock moves faster than a rifle bullet.

A series of close approaches are listed this week on NASA’s Asteroid Watch dashboard: 2026 DD6 and 2026 DD1 on February 25, 2026 CU1 on February 26, and 2026 DP6 plus 2026 CR4 on February 27. Although the distances—hundreds of thousands to a few million miles—sound comforting in a press-release sense, they are also sufficiently close to feel personal by space standards. With a log distance of roughly 613,000 miles, 2026 DD6 is the closest in that set.

Impact is not implied by any of this. Not even close. However, “safe” is not the same as “uninteresting,” and it’s possible that the public has been conditioned to view the space surrounding Earth as either peaceful or disastrous by films, breathless headlines, and our own nervous brains. The actual situation is more chaotic: a constant flow of objects, the majority of which are tiny and many of which have only recently been found, all of which require the same meticulous bookkeeping because gravity doesn’t care if the internet is paying attention.

When characterized in human terms, some of this week’s visitors are small enough to sound almost adorable. A couple, one about 20 feet and the other 29 feet, are classified as “bus-size” by NASA. Next is 2026 CU1, which is characterized as “airplane-size,” with a height of about 140 feet and a velocity of roughly 764,000 miles. Additionally, the 2026 CR4, which is even larger at roughly 170 feet, passes through at about 2.51 million miles—farther away but still big enough to make experts lean in.

It’s not because they anticipate fireworks that people are watching these flybys. They are doing this because tracking is the task at hand and every close approach presents an opportunity to refine the calculations. As new observations come in, JPL’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, which supports NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, updates orbits and forecasts near approaches.

The phrase “as new observations pour in” sounds neat, but in reality, it’s a never-ending jumble of information from observatories all over the world combined with the unsettling reality that initial estimates of a recently discovered object can be imprecise.

Scientists keep a close eye on these flybys for another, less romantic, reason: they are drills. Systems like Sentry, which monitors long-term effects, and Scout, which concentrates on very recent detections where uncertainty is highest and the warning window may be brief, are operated by CNEOS. A group of objects passing in the same week is similar to a busy shift in an emergency room; it’s not fatal, but it’s loud enough to show where the process falters.

It’s important to keep the definition grounded because the word “hazardous” has a tendency to take over the discussion. According to JPL, asteroids classified as “potentially hazardous” are typically larger than 140 meters (460 feet) and have orbits that can bring them within 4.6 million miles of Earth’s orbit. By that criterion, the big-league hazards this week are not the headlines. However, I’ve found that “not hazardous” is rarely interpreted by the general public as “not important.” It interprets it as “you’re hiding something,” which is where the strangeness in science communication begins.

This is a more truthful way to put it: this asteroid isn’t the threat. The gap between what we’ve discovered and what we haven’t is the threat. While acknowledging that there are many more near-Earth asteroids out there, particularly in smaller size ranges that are more difficult to detect early, NASA’s own planetary defense updates highlight the catalog’s enormous size—tens of thousands have already been found. Even though a bus-sized rock won’t destroy the planet, it can ruin a day if it shows up unexpectedly.

And even when the math says “safe,” the word “unannounced” keeps the scientists’ posture a little tense. Many of these things are quick, dim, and difficult to notice until they are close. They enter from the Sun’s glare. They manage to evade telescope coverage gaps. They become an issue on Wednesday after arriving late on Tuesday. The public’s understanding of how much planetary defense is essentially logistics—fast instrument pointing, clean data sharing, and orbit solutions as uncertainty decreases—remains unclear.

Yes, scientists are keeping an eye on the asteroid that passed this week. They are observing because, rather than being a badge you display on your wall, the distance numbers are a promise that needs to be consistently re-earned. A hectic week of flybys is a stress test masquerading as routine, which is why they are observing. Additionally, when complacency sets in, space’s speed and apathy have a way of transforming “routine” into “we should’ve seen that earlier.”

The reassuring aspect is that the monitoring is genuine: a whole system based on risk assessment, orbit computation, and detection that operates whether or not anyone is trending it. The work never stops, which is the unnerving aspect. Another quiet room will continue to stare at a moving dot while the dashboard refreshes, the next names appear, and the people continue to measure, update, doubt, and measure again.