By Jacopo Prisco, CNN
Radio telescopes inform astronomers about asteroids through the planetary radar data they collect.
An asteroid roughly the size of one to two school buses will soon fly by Earth, coming as close as 91,593 kilometres (56,913 miles), according to the European Space Agency - equivalent to about one quarter of the distance between Earth and the Moon.
Astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Survey in Tucson, Arizona, discovered the asteroid on 10 May and named it 2026JH2. The object belongs to a class of asteroids called Apollo, which orbit the sun on trajectories that intersect with Earth's own orbit around the sun.
At its closest pass, 2026JH2 will be about 24 percent of the average distance between Earth and the Moon, and about two and a half times the distance at which hundreds of geosynchronous satellites orbit, providing services such as telecommunications and weather forecasts. The close pass is expected to occur on Tuesday just before 10am (NZT), according to NASA's JPL Small-Body Database.
