A list of known near-Earth asteroid close approaches less than 1 lunar distance (0.0025696 AU (384,410 km; 238,860 mi)) from Earth in 2016.
For reference, the radius of Earth is approximately 0.0000426 AU (6,370 km; 3,960 mi) or 0.0166 Lunar distances.
The orbit of geosynchronous satellites, however, is 0.000282 AU (42,200 km; 26,200 mi) or 0.110 Lunar distances. This year, 6 (possibly 7) asteroids traveled nearer than this, most notably 2016 DY30, which approached a mere 1.25 Earth radii (8000 km) from the surface.
While most asteroids on this list are confirmed, well-observed unconfirmed objects with a 50% or greater chance of passing within 1 LD of the Earth are included as well.
The number of asteroids listed here are significantly less than those of asteroids that approach Earth for several reasons. Asteroids that approach Earth not only move faster, but are brighter and are easier to detect with modern surveys because:
Asteroids that come closer to Earth are a higher priority to confirm, and only confirmed asteroids are listed with a lunocentric approach distance.
Those that closely approach the Moon are frequently lost in its glare, making them harder to confirm. They are easier to discover during the new Moon, when the Moon is too close to the Sun to detect asteroids while they are near the Moon.
These factors severely limit the amount of Moon-approaching asteroids, to a level many times lower than the asteroids detected passing as close to Earth.
An example list of near-Earth asteroids that passed more than 1 lunar distance (384,400 km or 0.00256 AU) from Earth in 2016.
2015 YC2 (~102 meters in diameter) passed 4.92 Lunar distances (1.9 million km) from Earth on 15 January 2016.
XBBE860 (~8 meters in diameter) passed 1.13 lunar distances (435,000 km) from Earth on 1 February 2016.
P10tc2W (~10 meters in diameter) passed 1.02 lunar distances (391,000 km) from Earth on 6 March 2016
2013 TX68 (~30 meters in diameter) may have passed as close as 0.07 lunar distances (30,000 km) from Earth around 5–6 March 2016, but the best fitting orbital solution suggests that it passed roughly 11 lunar distances (4 million km) from Earth around 8 March 2016. 2013 TX68 has not been observed since 2013 and was not recovered during the 2016 passage.
252P/LINEAR (~900 meters in diameter) passed 13.9 lunar distances (5.3 million km) from Earth on 21 March 2016
Comet P/2016 BA14 (~1000 meters in diameter) passed 9.2 lunar distances (3.5 million km) from Earth on 22 March 2016.
2014 JG55 (~6 meters in diameter) has a minimum estimated approach on May 8, 2016 of 0.82 lunar distances (315,000 km) from Earth. However the best fit calculates an approach of 7.6 lunar distances (2.9 million km) from Earth.
2009 DL46 (~200 meters in diameter) passed 6.2 lunar distances (2.4 million km) from Earth on May 24, 2016.
2016 FE13 (~23 meters in diameter) passed 27.98 lunar distances (10.7 million km) from Earth on March 26, 2016
2016 PQ (~30 meters in diameter) passed 9.80 lunar distances (3.8 million km) from Earth on August 7, 2016.
2016 SW3 (~8 meters in diameter) passed between 1.0012 and 1.0029 lunar distances (385,000 km) from Earth on September 26, 2016.
2016 UQ36 (~11 meters in diameter) passed 1.033 lunar distances (397,000 km) from Earth on October 24, 2016
2017 AG5 (~108 meters in diameter) passed 4.6 Lunar distances (1.75 million km) from Earth on 30 December 2016
XF38FAC (Satellite 2015-007B) with an observation arc of only 17 minutes was estimated to have a chance of impacting Earth at 16:51 on 20 March 2016, but turned out to be the SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage that sent Deep Space Climate Observatory out to L1.
