(35396) 1997 XF11
asteroid
(35396) 1997 XF11 is a kilometer-sized asteroid, classified as a near-Earth object, Mars-crosser and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Apollo group.
Description
Three months after its discovery on 6 December 1997 by James V. Scotti of the University of Arizona's Spacewatch Project, the asteroid was predicted to make an exceptionally close approach to Earth on 28 October 2028. Additional precovery observations of the asteroid from 1990 were quickly found that refined the orbit and it is now known the asteroid will pass Earth on 26 October 2028, at a distance of 929,000 km (2.42 LD). During the close approach, the asteroid should peak at about apparent magnitude 8.2, and will be visible in binoculars.
1997 XF11 measures between 0.7 and 1.4 kilometers in diameter.
This asteroid also regularly comes near the large asteroid Pallas.
IAU Circular
On 11 March 1998, using a three-month observation arc, a faulty International Astronomical Union circular and press information sheet were put out that incorrectly concluded "that the asteroid was 'virtually certain' to pass within 80% of the distance to the Moon and stood a 'small...not entirely out of the question' possibility of hitting the Earth in 2028." But by 23 December 1997, it was clear that 1997 XF11 had no reasonable possibility of an Earth impact. Many news outlets mistakenly emphasized the possibility of disaster.
Within hours of the announcement, independent calculations by Paul Chodas, Don Yeomans, and Karri Muinonen had calculated that the probability of Earth impact was essentially zero, and vastly less than the probability of impact from as-yet-undiscovered asteroids. Chodas (1999) concurs with Marsden (1999) that based on the 1997 data alone there was about 1 chance in a hundred thousand that 1997 XF11 could have been on an Earth-impact trajectory—that is, until the 1990 precovery observations eliminated such possibilities.
“(35396) 1997 XF11” enters the record as asteroid. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what XF11 and asteroid can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q890195. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1997, 2028, 1990 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “(35396) 1997 XF11” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.