An intermediate-sized asteroid discovered sixteen years ago will fly safely past Earth on February 4, 2018 at 4:30 p.m. EST (1:30 p.m. PST, 21:30 UTC).
While the Patriots battle the Eagles in Minneapolis during Super Bowl 52 (February 4th, 2018, starting at 6:30 p.m. ET on NBC) a quite large asteroid with the official name of ‘2002 AJ129’ is set to whiz by Earth, missing us by a scant 2.6 million miles.
Object first identified on Christmas Day will travel between our planet and the moon
Classified as “potentially hazardous”, the near-Earth asteroid 3200 Phaethon has a diameter of about six kilometres — roughly one kilometre larger than previous estimates, new radar images obtained by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico suggest.
On Oct. 10, 2015, astronomers in Hawaii made a spooky discovery: a giant asteroid between 625 and 700 meters zipping through space, that at certain angles looks uncannily like a human skull.
The 5-kilometer-wide space rock will come as close as 6.4 million miles on December 16, 2017.
NASA’s latest New Frontiers mission, OSIRIS-REx, will venture to a near-Earth asteroid to discover clues about the unique resources asteroids hold, processes that affect asteroids’ orbital paths and their potential for impacting Earth, and the origins of life in the solar system.
3200 Phaethon is an asteroid measuring about 3 miles across that roams our galaxy, passing in and out of planetary orbits on its journey. Next month, 3200 Phaethon will zoom by at 6.2 million miles from Earth, which, in space terms, is nearly too close for comfort.
Earth’s been hiding a little secret from its partner, the moon.
The house-sized asteroid 2012 TC4 is slated to give Earth a close shave on Thursday, October 12, swooshing by our planet at approximately 5:41 UTC (1:41 a.m. EDT) at a distance of about 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers). Although there were some worries that this rocky object could hit the Earth, latest observations confirm that it poses no danger to our home planet at all.
