This object moves — fetching its current position…
Score breakdown
· 5 badges
25 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon34 pts → Rare
Crosses Earth's orbit+8
Aten: mostly inside Earth's orbit+8
Near-Earth object+5
Stony asteroid+4
Catalogue designation only+0
Total score25
9 more points to reach Rare.
Badges
🌠Near-Earth object· +5
🎯Crosses Earth's orbit· +8
🔢Catalogue designation only
⚱️Aten: mostly inside Earth's orbit· +8
🧗Stony asteroid· +4
✨ Trivia
What makes it special
🎯It crosses our path. Its orbit genuinely intersects Earth's track around the Sun. The two paths cross; only the timing keeps them apart.
What it actually is
🛸Its orbit family. An Aten-class object, spending most of its time inside Earth's orbit and crossing ours from the sunward side — which makes this family wretchedly hard to spot against the daylight.
🌞Closest approach. At its nearest it comes within 0.71 AU of the Sun — inside the orbit of Venus.
🔁One lap. A single orbit around the Sun takes it about 362 days.
🥏How far it roams. Its orbit swings between 0.71 and 1.28 AU from the Sun.
Sense of scale
🧱Sense of scale. In everyday terms it is about 4.8 football pitches across.
Standing on it
🦘Don't jump. Escape velocity here is only around 0.3 m/s. A determined jump would launch you off it and into your own orbit around the Sun.
By the numbers
📐Estimated size. Nobody has measured its size directly. Assuming it reflects light like a typical asteroid, its brightness implies something roughly 502 metres across.
Properties
aphelion au
1.28
designation
162015
eccentricity
0.2841
full name
162015 (1994 TF2)
h mag
19.25
inclination
23.75
mean motion deg day
0.9954
moid au
0.255
name
(162015) 1994 TF2
number only
yes
orbit class
ATE
perihelion au
0.711
semi major au
0.9934
spec taxonomy
Sr
spect
Sr
About (162015) 1994 TF2
(162015) 1994 TF2 is an uncommon neo. It has spectral type Sr and swings within 0.711 AU of the Sun at perihelion.
Its orbit genuinely intersects Earth's track around the Sun. The two paths cross; only the timing keeps them apart.
How to see it
Like any astronomical target, (162015) 1994 TF2 is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. Because it moves against the background stars, the live position panel on this page tracks where it is right now. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
Why (162015) 1994 TF2 is an uncommon neo
(162015) 1994 TF2 scores 25 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 5 science badges — Near-Earth object, Crosses Earth's orbit, Catalogue designation only, Aten: mostly inside Earth's orbit and Stony asteroid — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.