This object moves — fetching its current position…
Score breakdown
· 6 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon34 pts → Rare
Crosses Earth's orbit+8
Aten: mostly inside Earth's orbit+8
Near-Earth object+5
Tiny fragment (<1 km)+4
Stony asteroid+4
Catalogue designation only+0
Total score29
5 more points to reach Rare.
Badges
🌠Near-Earth object· +5
🤏Tiny fragment (<1 km)· +4
🎯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 0.6 AU of the Sun — inside the orbit of Venus.
🔁One lap. A single orbit around the Sun takes it about 299 days.
🥏How far it roams. Its orbit swings between 0.6 and 1.15 AU from the Sun.
Sense of scale
🧱Sense of scale. In everyday terms it is about 4.4 football pitches across.
Standing on it
🦘Don't jump. Escape velocity here is only around 0.28 m/s. A determined jump would launch you off it and into your own orbit around the Sun.
By the numbers
📐Size. Roughly 462 metres across.
Properties
albedo
0.25
aphelion au
1.15
designation
162142
diameter km
0.462
eccentricity
0.3178
full name
162142 (1998 VR)
h mag
18.78
inclination
21.81
mean motion deg day
1.203
moid au
0.151
name
(162142) 1998 VR
number only
yes
orbit class
ATE
perihelion au
0.597
rotation period h
8.44
semi major au
0.8753
spec taxonomy
Sk
spect
Sk
About (162142) 1998 VR
(162142) 1998 VR is an uncommon neo. It has spectral type Sk and swings within 0.597 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, (162142) 1998 VR 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 (162142) 1998 VR is an uncommon neo
(162142) 1998 VR scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 6 science badges — Near-Earth object, Tiny fragment (<1 km), 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.