United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
IrelandAvi Loeb says distance is key to reported ISS near-miss
NewsNation's fast-spreading clip shows an unidentified object crossing the frame, but its distance and speed remain unresolved.
NewsNation
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 137,937 views a day, 35 times a normal first day on this channel (3,950).
Unknown object may have nearly struck International Space Station | NewsNation Prime
A small, bright object moves across footage of the International Space Station, highlighted by a red circle. What the pictures alone cannot establish is the crucial part: how close it actually came.
In a NewsNation Prime interview, theoretical physicist Avi Loeb explains why that missing measurement matters. A fragment from a broken satellite is one possibility, he says, but identifying the object requires more than watching it move across a screen.
"In order to know what it is, we need to know the distance to it so that we can infer the speed by which it's moving," Loeb says. Radar or observations from multiple angles could help resolve that problem.
NewsNation describes NASA as still confirming the reported near-miss. The segment does not establish what the object was or how close it passed to the station.
The Short drew roughly 98,000 views in its first 13 hours, already far beyond the channel's usual full-day audience for that format. Its comment section was also much busier than usual.
Asked what a collision would mean, Loeb makes the danger conditional on the object's mass, while emphasizing the high relative speeds involved in orbit. He then extends the discussion to astronauts on the Moon: unlike people on Earth, they cannot rely on a protective atmosphere to intercept incoming micrometeorites.
An Israeli-American theoretical physicist at Harvard University whose research focuses on astrophysics and cosmology.
More on Wikipedia ›Published on Trari
Where next?
Is this your channel?For the channel's owners and team: a ready picture and text for your audience
Share the story with your audience. Everything is ready:
For an Instagram story or a WhatsApp status
For a community post or your channel's description
- Channel
- NewsNation
- Subscribers
- 2,800,000 ▲ 10,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 14,634,266
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,544,079 (on a normal day: 1,951,781)
- Video published
- November 8, 2026
- Video views so far
- 98,462 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 137,937
The numbers
The ISS segment has already drawn far more views and comments than a typical NewsNation Short receives on its first day.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which university is theoretical physicist Avi Loeb associated with?
Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University.