The discovery was made by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS-1 (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) on Haleakala, Maui, which is part of the NASA-funded Near-Earth Object Observation (NEOO) Program.
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“The trajectory of 2015 TB145 is well understood”, said Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. That’s an extremely close distance, and NASA also notes that this may be the closest encounter with an asteroid until about a decade from now. There is good news for Earthlings though, more than 95% of the asteroids with potential to end civilization which are at least 1 km across have been detected already and none of them are on course for Earth any time soon. The asteroid will be a delight for stargazers as It is the largest object to fly past Earth until next asteroid 1999 AN10, estimated to 2,600 feet (800 meters) approaches our planet in 2027.
And Chodas continues, “At the point of closest approach, it will be no closer than about 300,000 miles – 480,000 kilometers or 1.3 lunar distances”.
Asteroid 2015 TB145 will be too faint to spot on Halloween with the naked eye, but anyone who’s interested can get a look at the object online, thanks to live telescope views provided by the Slooh Community Observatory and the Virtual Telescope Project.
Astronomers at the space agency will be using the 34-meter (110-foot) DSS 13 antenna at Goldstone to bounce radio waves off the asteroid.
The gravitational influence of the asteroid is so small it will have no detectable effect on the moon or anything here on Earth, including tides, NASA said in a statement. NASA says none of the asteroids or comets it’s identified will come close enough to impact Earth anytime in the foreseeable future. & the Green Bank Telescope at Virginia as well as the Arecibo Observatory at Puerto Rico.
“The flyby presents a truly outstanding scientific opportunity to study the physical properties of this object”, NASA officials wrote.
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It is very hard to do anything especially in the case of an asteroid that is of this size. It’s quite big as asteroids go, around a third of a kilometer across, but it’s traveling at 35 kilometers per second, meaning when it hits something the results will be spectacular. “If so, then this would be the first time that the Goldstone radar has imaged a comet from such a close distance”.
