WASHINGTON, D.C. — A newly discovered asteroid designated 2026 JH2 will pass within about 57,000 miles of Earth on Monday, May 18, 2026, just after 5 p.m. Eastern Time. The space rock will first pass by the Moon around 2 p.m. Eastern Time before making its closest approach to Earth.

The flyby distance is less than a quarter of the distance from Earth to the Moon and falls within the orbital range of some communication satellites. The asteroid will not be visible to the naked eye.

Astronomers from the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona and the Farpoint Observatory in Eskridge, Kansas, first observed the object on May 10, 2026. Scientists estimate the asteroid measures between 50 and 115 feet across, roughly the size of a blue whale.

The object is roughly the same size as the asteroid that produced the Chelyabinsk airburst over Russia in 2013. That asteroid disintegrated in the atmosphere before reaching the ground, producing a shockwave that shattered windows across a wide swath of Siberia and injured more than 1,000 people.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory classifies 2026 JH2 as an Apollo-class near-Earth object, a category that includes asteroids whose orbits cross Earth's path around the Sun. The asteroid circles the Sun every 3.7 years.

The Virtual Telescope Project will broadcast the flyby live online beginning at 21:45 UTC on May 18, 2026, just after closest approach when the asteroid is near peak brightness. According to the European Space Agency, the asteroid will not pass by Earth again until 2060, and that approach will occur at a much greater distance than the 2026 pass.

The 2026 JH2 flyby occurs three years before the April 13, 2029, flyby of near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis, a 1,230-foot-wide rock that will pass just 20,000 miles from Earth. Astronomers have ruled out any collision risk from Apophis for at least a century.