On July 4, 2025, a NASA-backed telescope in Maui, Hawaii, Pan-STARRS2, spotted a wild little asteroid zipping through space. Nicknamed 2025 OW, this rocky rebel is about 200 feet wide, shaped like a cosmic potato, and spins like a top on espresso, one full rotation every 90 to 180 seconds!
Thanks to radar from Goldstone, scientists got a close-up look, spotting surface details as small as 12 feet across. That makes 2025 OW one of the fastest-spinning near-Earth asteroids ever caught on radar.
On July 28, 2025, NASA’s Goldstone radar snapped a series of 41 images of asteroid 2025 OW as it cruised past Earth. No need for panic, this space rock kept a respectful distance of 400,000 miles, about 1.6 times farther than the Moon.
It was a cosmic flyby, not a collision course. Just another day of Earth dodging space debris like a pro.
Asteroids aren’t just drifting rocks; they’re dancers in space, and sunlight is their choreographer. When sunlight hits an asteroid’s bumpy surface, it’s absorbed and re-emitted unevenly. Each escaping photon carries a whisper of momentum, gently nudging the asteroid into a spin. This slow but steady torque is called the YORP effect, like sunlight giving the asteroid a cosmic twirl.
For asteroid 2025 OW, spinning once every couple of minutes, that’s a dizzying pace! To keep from flying apart, it likely isn’t a loose pile of space gravel. Instead, it may be a solid chunk of rock, tough enough to hold itself together while spinning like a record in zero gravity.
Thanks to radar snapshots from NASA’s Goldstone Observatory, scientists now have a much clearer idea of asteroid 2025 OW’s path, not just today, but for decades to come. The data helped tighten predictions about its distance from Earth and future movements.
It’s July 28, 2025, and flyby was the closest it’ll get to Earth anytime soon. So while it gave us a good look this time, 2025 OW is heading back to the cosmic highway. For now, Earth can breathe easy.