Pallas is a very large asteroid circling the sun between Mars and Jupiter, inside the main asteroid belt. NASA JPL does not treat Pallas as potentially hazardous, because its orbit never carries it near Earth.
One lap around the sun takes Pallas 1,680 days (4.6 years). Over that circuit it swings between 2.13 AU and 3.41 AU from the sun, travelling at an average of 17.94 km/s. At 513.0 kilometers across, Pallas is roughly the size of Great Britain.
Pallas has been watched long enough to time its spin: one full turn on its axis takes 7.81 hours.
Its spectral type — B on the Tholen scale, B on SMASSII — suggests Pallas holds hydrogen, nitrogen, ammonia, and iron.
At their nearest, the orbits of Pallas and Earth stay 1.23 AU apart. That is a comfortable margin, and it holds at every point in the orbit.
Orbital simulations run by NASA JPL's CNEOS turn up no close approaches to Earth.
The orbit of Pallas is pinned down by sightings going back to Aug. 27, 1804, the most recent officially logged on June 3, 2023. The IAU Minor Planet Center holds 9,090 observations behind that solution.
A ◯ pink circle marks where Pallas sits. It may fall outside your current field of view — use the controls below to change the position, location and time.