Observed from the Canary Islands an asteroid that passed "grazing" Earth in mid-August

The ATLAS-Teide telescopic planetary defense system, installed at the Teide Observatory by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), detected on August 11 at 2:20 AM Canary time a small asteroid 10 meters in diameter that passed very close to Earth a day later, in the early morning of August 12, at 1:50 AM local time.

The object, officially designated 2026 PC6 by the Minor Planet Center, is approximately the size of a bus and flew over our planet passing at only 14,573 kilometers from the surface, less than one-twentieth of the distance separating the Earth from the Moon.

At that distance, the asteroid crossed the orbit of geostationary artificial satellites, thus becoming the asteroid that has registered the closest encounter with Earth this 2026. 

"At the moment of maximum approach, it crossed the sky at a dizzying speed, more than two degrees per minute. That is to say, in one minute it covered the distance that would be equivalent to having four moons together and reached a magnitude of 10, which allowed it to be visible with small telescopes, although only from the Southern Hemisphere. At no time was there any risk of impact: the object followed its trajectory and moved away from Earth without incident," the IAC pointed out this Tuesday in a statement. 

The IAC researcher and principal investigator of ATLAS-Teide, Javier Licandro, explained that "objects like 2026 PC6 are precisely the priority objective of the ATLAS system: to discover small, dark, and fast-moving bodies that approach Earth very closely and that, due to their reduced size, are invisible until very shortly before, or even after, their closest approach." 

Although an asteroid of these dimensions would largely disintegrate upon entering the atmosphere, producing a brilliant superbolide, the effects of the hypervelocity entry, mainly the shock wave generated, can cause significant personal and infrastructure damage, as illustrated by the Chelyabinsk (Russia) event in 2013 when an object barely larger than 2026 PC6 impacted Earth. 

"Detecting them in time is the key to taking citizen protection measures that minimize damage," the IAC states.

"2026 PC6 is exactly the kind of object for which ATLAS-Teide was built: small, very close, and difficult to see. Having discovered it and allowed the extensive network of telescopes worldwide dedicated to planetary defense to track its trajectory, demonstrates that ATLAS-Teide fulfills the function for which it was designed: to monitor the sky to give us the earliest possible warning of a potential impact," Licandro stated.

The asteroid was initially captured as an unconfirmed candidate (with the provisional designation A11FyZe) and published on the Minor Planet Center's near-Earth object confirmation page. 

After gathering a hundred measurements of its position, its orbit could be determined, a possible impact ruled out, and the provisional designation 2026 PC6 assigned.

ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) is an asteroid detection and early warning system funded by NASA and developed by the University of Hawaii, conceived to detect bodies on a trajectory approaching Earth and provide the greatest possible warning margin for an eventual impact. 

ATLAS-Teide is one of its three nodes in the Northern Hemisphere (there are two others in Hawaii, while in the South it has one in Chile and a fifth in South Africa. 

Built and installed by the IAC at the Teide Observatory and operated in cooperation with the University of Hawaii, ATLAS-Teide expands sky coverage and reinforces the global surveillance capacity of the ATLAS network, which monitors the entire observable night sky every night, capable of detecting objects up to magnitude V=19.5

ATLAS-Teide was installed in January 2025 and began systematic operations in May of that year. 

Since then, it has discovered about twenty NEAs (near-Earth Asteroids), reported the position and brightness of over 5000 NEAs, and reported over a thousand detections of possible supernovae, of which almost two hundred have been confirmed and classified.