PASADENA, USA, Oct. 23, 2026 - A house-sized visitor is coming back. The asteroid 2010 VQ, about 10 metres across, will sweep past Earth at 4.56 lunar distances on 12 December 2026, its next close approach.

It is one of the near-Earth asteroids on the long-term impact monitoring list, with a cumulative impact chance of about 1 in 629. That sounds alarming, but the asteroid rates 0 on the Torino scale and -4.41 on the Palermo scale, and no impact is predicted.

2010 VQ goes round the Sun every 0.80 years, and right now it shines at magnitude 27.2, far too faint to see without a large telescope. The same day, a second small asteroid, 2025 XN6, passes at 6.91 lunar distances.

Space Nugget. A lunar distance is the average distance between Earth and the Moon, about 384,000 kilometres, so 4.6 lunar distances is well beyond the Moon's orbit. Asteroids join impact-watch lists when their orbits are not yet known precisely enough to rule out a future collision; each new observation narrows the possibilities, and most are eventually cleared.