How many asteroids pass closer to Earth than the Moon each year?

Astronomers know of 189 asteroid flybys closer than the Moon (about 384,000 km away) in 2025, against about 20 a year in 2007 to 2009. Asteroids aren't passing more often: better sky surveys now spot many more of the small ones, most only a few meters across. The counts include flybys worked out for earlier years from asteroids found later.

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Key facts

Measure: Known asteroid flybys closer than the Moon. Written from the data below.

  • The latest figure, for 2025, is 189.
  • That is 189 times the 2000 figure, 1.
  • It is the highest in the data, which go back to 2000.
  • The lowest was 1 in 2000.

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Source and date

Source
NASA/JPL Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), SBDB Close Approach Data
License
Public domain (NASA data); credit NASA/JPL-Caltech CNEOS
Data as of
Published

Citation

Chartly. “How many asteroids pass closer to Earth than the Moon each year?” Chart. Data: NASA/JPL Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), SBDB Close Approach Data, https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/ (data as of December 31, 2025). https://chart.ly/charts/asteroid-flybys-closer-than-the-moon (accessed November 4, 2026).

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The data

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The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly. Developers can also get them as JSON (how).

Year Known asteroid flybys closer than the Moon
2000 1
2001 2
2002 2
2003 5
2004 13
2005 7
2006 12
2007 18
2008 21
2009 20
2010 25
2011 32
2012 23
2013 24
2014 33
2015 27
2016 53
2017 58
2018 81
2019 86
2020 114
2021 160
2022 143
2023 115
2024 145
2025 189

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