Until then, the asteroid will pass Earth several times, but none of the encounters will be quite so close.
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Radar signals were sent toward 1999 JD6 from NASA’s 70-meter DSS-14 antenna at the Goldstone Complex in California’s Mojave Desert, and received at the even larger NRAO Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. Additional data shows that the peanut-shaped asteroid has a width of 1.2 miles, a calculation that has been obtained by analyzing the size, the shape and the rotations of the star.
NASA has revealed the first pictures of a peanut-shaped asteroid that flew by the Earth on July 25.
NASA recently released images of this asteroid, which is considered a contact binary, or one that has two lobes stuck to each other. In spite being compared to a harmless peanut, scientists believe the asteroid could have posed many threats to the population of the Earth, had it hit the surface of our planet.
NASA observed the asteroid as it came the closest to Earth in more than a century.
Last week, a peanut-shaped asteroid zoomed past Earth at seven.seven lot of far, which is certainly 19 hours a long way between earth plus the Moon. In fact, the U.S. has the most robust and productive survey and detection program for discovering near-Earth objects (NEOs).
This week’s flyby was the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for about the next 40 years. The next time it will approach Earth this closely is in 2054, at approximately the same distance of this week’s flyby.
“I’m interested in this particular asteroid because estimates of its size from previous observations – at infrared wavelengths – have not agreed”, said Marshall, a Cornell doctoral student in the field of astronomy. “The radar data will allow us to conclusively resolve the mystery of its size to better understand this interesting little world”, he said.
Still, it should be noted that 1999 JD6 isn’t really that odd in terms of its appearance.
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Radar images of asteroids – gathered from millions of miles away in some cases – have resolutions as small as 12 feet, with 1999 JD6 at about 30 feet.
