Details of near-Earth asteroid revealed

(Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arecibo Observatory/USRA/NSF)

Recently, a huge near-Earth asteroid, nicknamed “The Beast”, whizzed less than a million miles away from our planet. In order to find out more, NASA researchers bounced radio signals off the asteroid, creating some of the most detailed radar views of an asteroid ever captured.

Earth-based radar observations, by a Deep Space Network antenna in California, revealed that the asteroid was over 1,200 feet (370 m) wide and made up of two lobes.

Lance Benner, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, explained: “This may be a double object, or ‘contact binary,’ consisting of two objects that form a single asteroid with a lobed shape”.

Benner and a team of colleagues also observed that the asteroid rotated only a few degrees, suggesting that “The Beast” spins around about once every 24 hours.

The asteroid approached Earth at a relatively close distance, coming within 777,000 miles (1.25 million kilometers) at its nearest approach. This is about 3.25 times the distance between the Earth and the moon. Scientists began their investigations shortly after its closest approach, when the asteroid was between about 864,000 miles and 902,000 miles from Earth.

Traveling at a speed of 31,000 mph (50,000 km/h), the space rock passed Earth safely and never posed any threat of a collision with our planet.

For a video and more information on ‘The Beast’, click here.