Asteroid 2026 EM passes the Earth.

Asteroid 2026 EM passed by the Earth at a distance of about 28 424 km (7% of the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 0.02% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, but 71 times the distance at which the International Space Station orbits the Earth), at about 7.45 pm GMT on Monday 7 March 2026. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would not have presented a significant threat. Asteroid 2026 EM has an estimated equivalent diameter of 1-3 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 1-3 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be expected to explode in an airburst (an explosion caused by superheating from friction with the Earth's atmosphere, which is greater than that caused by simply falling, due to the orbital momentum of the asteroid) more than 42 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material (if that) reaching the Earth's surface.

The relative positions of 2026 EM, the Earth, and the Moon at 8.00 pm on Monday 7 March 2026. JPL Small Body Database.

2026 EM was discovered on 6 March 2026 (the day of its closest approach to the Earth) by the University of Szeged's Szeged Asteroid Program, which is located at the Piszkéstető Mountain Station in the Mátra Mountains to the northeast of Budapest. The designation 2022 EM implies that it was the 12th asteroid (object M - in numbering asteroids the letters A-Y, excluding I, are assigned numbers from 1 to 25, with a number added to the end each time the alphabet is ended so that A = 1, A1 = 26, A2 = 51, etc., which means that M implies the 12th asteroid) discovered in the first half of March 2026 (period 2026 E - the year being split into 24 half-months represented by the letters A-Y, with I being excluded).

The relative positions of 2026 EM, the Earth, and the planets of the Inner Solar System at 8.00 pm on Monday 7 March 2026. JPL Small Body Database.

2026 EM has a 425 day (1.16 year) orbital period, with an elliptical orbit tilted at an angle of 4.77° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to 0.89 AU from the Sun (89% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) and out to 1.32 AU (132% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun). It is therefore classed as an Apollo Group Asteroid (an asteroid that is on average further from the Sun than the Earth, but which does get closer). This means that Asteroid 2026 EM has occasional close encounters with the Earth, with the most recent having happened in March 2019, and the next predicted for March 2039. The asteroid also has occasional close encounters with the planet Mars, with the next such encounter predicted for May 2032.

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