A near-Earth asteroid roughly the size of a passenger jet swept past Earth on Aug. 7, the largest in a cluster of five objects NASA tracked through its Asteroid Watch dashboard during the first week of August.
Designated 2026 OE1, the asteroid measures about 180 feet (55 meters) across and passed at a distance of roughly 1.82 million miles — more than seven times farther than the moon, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It was the last and largest of five objects that flew past Earth between Aug. 5 and Aug. 7, a run that also included the bus-sized 2026 PK and the house-sized 2026 PC.
None of the five met NASA's threshold for "potentially hazardous," a classification reserved for objects larger than 460 feet whose orbits bring them within 4.6 million miles of Earth. Newsweek reported that NASA's calculations showed 2026 OE1 would "remain safely distant from Earth" throughout the flyby.
Close approaches like this one are routine — JPL's dashboard tracks dozens of objects passing within its 4.6-million-mile monitoring radius every month — but they draw outsized public attention whenever an asteroid's size is compared to something familiar, in this case an airplane. Scientists use the passes to refine orbital-tracking models and radar techniques underpinning planetary-defense work, the same toolkit NASA used in July to determine that a separate long-tracked near-Earth object, 1998 SH2, is in fact a previously unrecognized comet rather than an asteroid.
NASA continues to publish updated approach data through its Asteroid Watch dashboard as new objects are discovered and tracked, part of an ongoing cadence the agency says poses no threat to Earth but functions as a standing test of its detection network.