A brand new astronomical observatory has discovered over 11,000 previously-unknown asteroids.
Astronomers using the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located atop a mountain in Chile, say they've detected an uprecedented amount of 'new' asteroids and have submitted them to the International Astronomical Union for confirmation.
Among the batch of 11,000 asteroids are 33 Near Earth Objects that come within a celestial hair's breadth of Earth's orbit around the Sun.
More on asteroids
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its first images on 23 June 2025.
It's one of a new generation of space telescopes and observatories that astronomers believe could fundamentally transform our knowledge of both our Solar System and the wider Universe.
The Rubin Observatory's 10-year mission will see it create a time-lapse survey of the southern sky, using the biggest camera ever built to unlock the secrets of dark matter and dark energy, map the Milky Way and uncover asteroids, comets and interstellar objects in our Solar System.
For this latest tranche of asteroid discoveries, Rubin conducted one million observations over about six weeks, observing 11,000 new asteroids and 80,000 previously-known asteroids.
"This first large submission after Rubin First Look is just the tip of the iceberg and shows that the observatory is ready," says Mario Juric, faculty at the University of Washington and Rubin Solar System Lead Scientist.
"What used to take years or decades to discover, Rubin will unearth in months. We are beginning to deliver on Rubin’s promise to fundamentally reshape our inventory of the Solar System and open the door to discoveries we haven’t yet imagined."
What has Rubin found?
As well as the 11,000 new asteroids and the 80,000 previously-known asteroids, the Rubin Observatory found 33 new Near Earth Objects.
These are small asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun and come as close as – or closer than – 1.3 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
While scientists say none of the newly-discovered NEOs poses a threat to Earth, the biggest ones are about 500 metres wide.
And scientists say Rubin could eventually discover nearly 90,000 new NEOs, some of which may be potentially hazardous to Earth.
It could also nearly double the number of known NEOs larger than 140 meters to around 70%.
Among the latest discoveries are 380 trans-Neptunian objects, which are icy bodies orbiting beyond Neptune.
Two of the newly discovered trans-Neptunian objects – provisionally named 2025 LS2 and 2025 MX348 – have large and elongated, stretched-out orbits.
At their greatest distance in their orbits, reach about 1,000 times farther from the Sun than Earth is.
That makes them among the 30 most distant minor planets known.
The 380 candidates discovered add to the 5,000 discovered over the past three decades.
"Searching for a TNO is like searching for a needle in a field of haystacks — out of millions of flickering sources in the sky, teaching a computer to sift through billions of combinations and identify those that are likely to be distant worlds in our Solar System required novel algorithmic approaches," says Matthew Holman, a Senior Astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonia.
"Objects like these offer a tantalising probe of the Solar System’s outermost reaches," says Kevin Napier, a research scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "from telling us how the planets moved early on in the Solar System’s history, to whether a hitherto undiscovered 9th large planet may still be out there."
