Asteroid flew within lunar orbit at record close distance to Earth

Asteroid 2025 QD8 flew inside the Moon's orbit at a record close distance from Earth. This was reported by the Laboratory of Solar Astronomy of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, according to RIA Novosti.

It approached Earth at a minimum distance at approximately 19:00 Baku time.

"The object posed no danger to Earth and passed the planet at a distance of about 0.6 of the distance to the Moon (slightly more than 200 thousand kilometers)," said the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The celestial body was first noticed on August 18, it was not known before. Currently, the asteroid is still inside the Moon's orbit.

The size of the asteroid is 22 meters, which is comparable to the size of the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which disintegrated near Chelyabinsk at an altitude of 23.3 km on February 15, 2013.