Near Earth Asteroid's near-miss

An Asteroid, estimated to be about 36ft in diameter, will pass within around 37,000 miles of the Earth at 4pm.

Although the asteroid – named 2012 BX34 – will travel past less than a fifth of the distance to the Moon, experts said there is no cause for concern.

"It's one of the closest approaches recorded," said Gareth Williams, associate director of the US-based Minor Planet Center.

"It makes it in to the top 20 closest approaches, but it's sufficiently far away ... that there's absolutely no chance of it hitting us," he told the BBC.

The asteroid's path makes it the closest space-rock to pass by the Earth since object 2011 MD in June 2011.

arlier estimates put the asteroid's closest distance at as little as 12,000 miles, near the distance at which geostationary satellites reside, but observations overnight showed it will pass at a more comfortable distance.

Although the asteroid will not be visible to the naked eye, Dr Williams said that keen backyard astronomers could get a look.

UK clouded out for 2005 YU55 – but Asteroid Captured by BAA

The Near-Earth Object (NEO), Asteroid ‘YU55′ is especially noteworthy in that it is the largest known NEO to have passed so close to the Earth (0.85 lunar-distances away) that has been predicted in advance of the event.

Detailed radar images including animations showing the object rotating will be released by NASA during the next few days, news of which can be found at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm

Given the poor weather in the UK, BAA member Martin Mobberley used a remotely-operated 0.5-m telescope at the GRAS facilities in New Mexico to secure a 1-minute exposure of the 11th magnitude object taken some 7 hours after closest approach.

The very fast moving object is clearly visible as a bright streak in the centre of Martin’s image taken whilst it was at a distance of about 450,000 km from the Earth, just beyond the orbit of the Moon.

Huge Asteroid 2005 YU55's Close Encounter With Earth

In April 2010, this radar image of the near-Earth asteroid 2005 YU55 was taken by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. 

On Nov. 8, 2011, this large space rock zips by Earth again and will be surveyed by radar, visual and infrared equipment.

CREDIT: NASA/Cornell/Arecibo

Skywatchers hoping to glimpse a huge asteroid as it flies close by Earth Tuesday (Nov. 8) will need the right equipment and a lot of luck to spot the faint and fast-moving space rock in telescopes, scientists say.

The interloping space rock, called asteroid 2005 YU55, will pass between Earth and the orbit of the moon on Tuesday (Nov. 8), but does not pose a threat to our planet, NASA scientists have said.

The asteroid is about the size of an aircraft carrier, spanning approximately 1,300 feet (400 meters), and is the largest space rock to have a close encounter with Earth with advance notice in 35 years.

Asteroid 2005 YU55 is expected to pass closest to Earth at a range of about 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers) on Tuesday at 6:28 p.m. EST (2328 GMT). The average distance between the moon and Earth is about 238,854 miles (384,399 km).

Skywatchers around the world are gearing up for the event, but actually spotting the asteroid as it flies by Earth could be tricky, said Scott Fisher, program director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Astronomical Sciences.

Still, the asteroid flyby will be visible from the northern hemisphere, and Fisher offered some helpful tips in an NSF webchat on Nov. 3 organized by ScienceNow

The last time a space rock as big as 2005 YU55 came as close to Earth was in 1976, although astronomers did not know about the flyby at the time. 

The next known approach of an asteroid this large will be in 2028

NASA OSIRIS-REx Satellite to Visit Near Earth Asteroid

In a few years a NASA spacecraft will seek the building blocks of life in a shovelful of asteroid dirt. The OSIRIS-REx1 spacecraft, targeted for launch in September 2016, will intercept asteroid 1999 RQ36, orbit it for a year, and then reach out a robotic arm to touch its surface.

"We call it 'touch and go,'" explains principal investigator Michael Drake of the University of Arizona. "OSIRIS-REx will approach the surface at 0.1 m/sec (only 0.2 mph, less than a tenth of walking pace) and, without landing, stretch out its arm equipped with a sample collector. We'll simply agitate the asteroid's surface with ultra-pure nitrogen to stir up material for capture."

Asteroids appear to be as lifeless as Yorick's skull, yet material captured from 1999 RQ36 could hold clues to life's origin on Earth.

Some scientists believe Earth's surface was sterilised soon after the planet was formed some 4.5 billion years ago. Planetoids and other debris left over from the genesis of planets pummeled Earth, turning it into a cratered wasteland. The tremendous kinetic energy from the collisions heated Earth to the boiling point.

"Earth at 'time zero' had a steam atmosphere that was wrung out to make a boiling hot ocean," says Drake.

"Imagine standing on a lava lake in Hawaii, but it's a planet-wide, 600 mile deep lake. You and everything else, including any organics and any one-celled organisms, would be instantly converted to carbon dioxide and water."

In this scenario, an infusion of organics from elsewhere might be required to ignite life here. The building blocks for life on our planet may have come, at least in part, from asteroids.

"Observations by ground-based telescopes suggest that asteroid 1999 RQ36 has a wealth of carbon-based compounds, but we don't know exactly what is there. Are there amino acids?

To find out, we need to bring a sample home where we have sophisticated, exquisitely precise instruments, plus the ability to react to new discoveries."

NASA WISE Discovers Over 90 Near-Earth Objects

WISE Discovers Over 90 Near-Earth Objects

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, completed its first survey of the entire sky on July 17, 2010. The mission has generated more than one million images so far, of everything from asteroids to distant galaxies.

So far, WISE has observed more than 100,000 asteroids, both known and previously unseen. Most of these space rocks are in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. However, some are near-Earth objects, asteroids and comets with orbits that pass relatively close to Earth. WISE has discovered more than 90 of these new near-Earth objects.

The infrared telescope is good at spotting comets that orbit far from Earth and has discovered more than a dozen of these so far. WISE's infrared vision also gives it a unique ability to pick up the glow of cool stars, called brown dwarfs, in addition to distant galaxies bursting with light and energy. These galaxies are called ultra-luminous infrared galaxies. WISE can see the brightest of them.

"The WISE all-sky survey is helping us sift through the immense and diverse population of celestial objects," said Hashima Hasan, WISE Program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It's a great example of the high impact science
that's possible from NASA's Explorer Program."

Russia And Europe: Join Forces To Protect Earth From Asteroids

Russia And Europe May Join Forces To Protect Earth From Asteroids

Russian space officials and members of the European Commission will meet in early July to discuss joining forces against thousands of potentially hazardous asteroids, the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said.

Despite the growing concern about the asteroid threat, no anti-asteroid defense programs have been developed in practice so far, with only several theoretical concepts being studied. At a meeting in Moscow on July 7, the European Commission will consider Roscosmos's proposal to start a joint anti-asteroid project with the European Union.

"I received a letter, in which the European Commission proposes to meet on July 7 in Roscosmos with scientists and engineers of the Federal Space Agency, the Russian Academy of Sciences and other institutions and organizations. At the meeting, the Russian bid to start a joint project with the EU will be considered," Anatoly Perminov said.

In his Wednesday's report to Roscosmos, the head of the Astronomy Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Boris Shustov, said Russian scientists had detected a total of 6,960 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) as of April 10.

The vast majority - 6,070 space bodies, or 87.2% of the total - are asteroids measuring from 100 meters to 1,000 meters in diameter. Others are 48 comets (1.2%) and 806 asteroids measuring more than a thousand of meters in diameter (11.6 %).

Russia 'plans to stop asteroid'

The head of Russia's federal space agency has said it will work to divert an asteroid which will make several passes near the Earth from 2029. Mr Perminov said Roscosmos' science council would hold a 'closed meeting'

Anatoly Perminov told the Voice of Russia radio service that the agency's science council would hold a closed meeting to discuss the issue.

Any eventual plan is likely to be an international collaboration, he said.

The US space agency said in October that there is a one-in-250,000 chance of Apophis hitting Earth in 2036.

That announcement was a significant reduction in the probability of an impact, based on previous calculations that put the chances at about one-in-45,000. The asteroid is estimated to pass within about 30,000 km of the Earth in 2029.

Mr Perminov, who is the chief of Roscosmos, gave little detail of any plans that the agency has, but was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying that the solution would not entail the use of nuclear weapons.

Other schemes that have been put forth in the past for diverting asteroids from collision courses include spacecraft that nudge the space rocks out of their trajectory through force, or diverting them with "solar sails" that use the wind of particles ejected from the Sun.

"People's lives are at stake," Mr Perminov reportedly told the radio service Golos Rossii (Voice of Russia).

"We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people."

Taken by Surprise! Unknown Asteroid Buzzed Earth

A previously undiscovered asteroid came within 14,000 km of Earth last week, and astronomers noticed it only 15 hours before closest approach.


On Nov. 6 at around 16:30 EST a 7 meter asteroid, now called 2009 VA, came only about 2 Earth radii from impacting our home planet.


This is the third-closest known non-impacting Earth approach on record for a cataloged asteroid.

Early on Nov. 6 the asteroid was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey and was quickly identified by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge MA as an object that would soon pass very close to the Earth.


JPL's Near-Earth Object Program Office also computed an orbit solution for this object, and determined that it was not headed for an impact.

The two closer approaches include the 1-meter sized asteroid 2008 TS26, which passed within 6,150 km of the Earth's surface on October 9, 2008, and the 7-meter sized asteroid 2004 FU162 that passed within 6,535 km on March 31, 2004. On average, objects the size of 2009 VA pass this close about twice per year and impact Earth about once every 5 years.

Only thirteen months ago, another asteroid, 2008 TC3 was discovered under similar circumstances, but that one was found to be on a trajectory headed for the Earth, with impact only about 11 hours away. It impacted in a remote area of Africa; no one was injured and fragments have since been recovered for study.