No Need To Worry As Asteroid 2025 MA90 Passes Southern Utah Safely

Well that was close

Southern Utah just had what space would call a close encounter with an asteroid. On July 15, 2025, asteroid 2025 MA90 zipped past Earth in a cosmic drive-by, just missing us by a mere 4 and a half million miles. Woosh.

Why NASA tracks Near-Earth Objects

This asteroid belongs to the Aten group, a class of asteroids whose orbits cross Earth’s path. Like being on the same galactic freeway, but maybe in different lanes. Once NASA sees one of those on their radar the tracking begins. Why? So we can take precautions like run to the other side of the earth of course.

Seriously what could we do if we knew the asteroid was on a collision course? Well NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (yes, that’s a real thing) monitors Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) for early detection to give us time to act.

Evacuation or Redirection of asteroid 2025 MA90

The acting part would be evacuation (see, run to the other side of the earth), but they have been successful with deflection. Do you remember The Double Asteroid Redirection Test where NASA navigated the spacecraft in 2022 to intentionally collide with the asteroid Dimorphos? It turned out that they were able to change the direction reinforcing the idea that redirecting an asteroid is possible.

Read More: Who Sent This Deep Space Radio Signal That Just Reached Earth?

The Chance 2025 MA90 Would Hit Southern Utah

This is not from NASA, but I just wanted to know how likely it was that 2025 MA90 could have hit southern Utah, you know just so we know how close we were to obliteration. So four and a half million times the speed and add the direction, carry the one. Oh, hmmm the chance comes out at zero. Well, it's still a good idea to be prepared.

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