Earth was grazed by a tiny asteroid last week, which passed about as close as the International Space Station (ISS). That makes it the second-closest known flyby on record.

The asteroid, designated 2025 TF, whizzed over Antarctica at 00:47:26 UTC on Wednesday 1 October, at an altitude of around 428 kilometers (266 miles). That's within the orbit of the ISS , which ranges between 370 and 460 kilometers.

That's a pretty close shave, but it's not the closest we know of. That honor belongs to a rock called 2020 VT4 , which zipped past at a distance of just 368 kilometers in November 2020.

Obviously, we're talking about the closest non-impacting flyby here. On occasion , some will make contact with the atmosphere, burn off a little mass, and skip off like a stone from the surface o

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