Approaching Asteroid 1998 QE2 Has a Moon, Images Reveal

[Buster's Uncle]

Approaching Asteroid 1998 QE2 Has a Moon, Images Reveal
By Megan Gannon | SPACE.com – 21 hrs ago..

First radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2 were obtained when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth.

 
A huge asteroid set to sail past Earth on Friday has its own moon, NASA scientists have just discovered.

Researchers obtained a series of radar images of the approaching asteroid 1998 QE2 late Wednesday (May 29) using the Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif. Images captured over the course of two hours showed that the asteroid is actually a binary system.

The main space rock is the size of nine ocean liners, roughly 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) across, and the satellite that orbits it is estimated to be 2,000 feet (600 meters) wide, according to NASA.

Binary systems are quite common among near-Earth asteroids. Of space rocks at least 655 feet (200 meters) across, about 16 percent are binary or triple systems, NASA officials said.

1998 QE2 poses no threat of hitting Earth during the flyby, space agency officials assure. Its closest approach will occur at 4:59 EDT on Friday (May 31) and it is expected to pass at least 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers) away from the planet. The asteroid won't be visible to the unaided eye as it zips by, but on Friday afternoon, you can watch live telescope webcasts of the asteroid flyby on SPACE.com.

Though harmlessly far away, this will be the nearest 1998 QE2 gets to Earth in the next two centuries. As it passes, the asteroid will be closely watched by astronomers. In addition to the 230-foot-wide (70 meter) Deep Space Network antenna, astronomers will also be using the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to observe 1998 QE2 until June 9.

Radar images help scientists understand the nature of asteroids and improve their calculations of asteroid orbits. The images obtained Wednesday night also revealed dark features on the surface of 1998 QE2, which suggest it has several large concavities, NASA scientists said.

1998 QE2 was first discovered on Aug. 19, 1998, by MIT's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program near Socorro, N.M.

NASA keeps a close watch on near-Earth objects, or NEOs, that could pose a potential threat to the planet. Among the space agency's ambitious plans for the future study of asteroids is OSIRIS-REx, a mission set to launch in 2016 and rendezvous with the near-Earth asteroid 1999 RQ36 in 2020.

http://news.yahoo.com/approaching-asteroid-1998-qe2-moon-images-reveal-204619770.html

[Unorthodox]

It's the alien ship that was supposed to be behind Hale-bopp.   (however it was spelled)

[Buster's Uncle]

So some of its mass is Nike sneakers, Uno?

...

Huge Asteroid Cruises Past Earth
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com – 21 hrs ago..

 
An asteroid wider than nine ocean liners sailed safely past Earth today (May 31), making its closest flyby of our planet for at least the next 200 years.

Asteroid 1998 QE2, which is about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) wide, cruised within 3.6 million miles (5.8 million km) of Earth at 4:59 p.m. EDT (2059 GMT) today, then slipped silently off into the depths of space once again.

The huge space rock never posed any danger of hitting Earth on this pass, scientists say. Indeed, at its closest approach this afternoon, 1998 QE2 was still about 15 times farther away than the moon is from Earth.

But astronomers have been tracking the asteroid closely nonetheless, regarding the close encounter as an opportunity to learn more about 1998 QE2's composition, structure and orbit.

They've trained two huge radio telescopes on the space rock — NASA's 230-foot-wide (70 meters) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., and the 1,000-foot (305 m) dish at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

"It is tremendously exciting to see detailed images of this asteroid for the first time," Lance Benner, principal investigator for the Goldstone radar observations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement earlier this month.

"With radar, we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own unique set of characteristics," Benner added. "In a real sense, radar imaging of near-Earth asteroids is a fundamental form of exploring a whole class of solar system objects."

The observation campaign is set to run through June 9, but it has already transformed scientists' understanding of 1998 QE2. Researchers announced Thursday (May 30), for example, that the asteroid is actually a binary system, in which a 2,000-foot (600 m) moon circles the much larger space rock.

Asteroid 1998 QE2 was discovered in August 1998 by astronomers working with MIT's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research program in New Mexico. The space rock is one of 10,000 or so near-Earth asteroids identified to date, but the total population of these close-flying objects is thought to exceed 1 million.

Scientists are working hard to find and track as many of these asteroids as they can, starting with the biggest and most dangerous ones. The good news is that they've spotted virtually all the mountain-size asteroids like 1998 QE2 that could threaten human civilization if they hit Earth, and none are on a collision course with Earth for the foreseeable future.

Many smaller but still hazardous objects remain undiscovered, however. For example, astronomers have catalogued less than 30 percent of the asteroids at least 330 feet (100 m) wide that are thought to come uncomfortably close to Earth at some point in their orbits. Such objects could destroy an area the size of a state if they slammed into Earth.

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-asteroid-cruises-past-earth-211215833.html