There are many asteroids out there and NASA’s Deep Space Network tries to keep track of those that will pass near the Earth. They are reporting that asteroid 2005 YU55 will fly by at 0.85 lunar distances. Which is another way of saying it will be closer to us than the moon (1.0 lunar distance). It is pretty big too, at 400 feet in diameter. It was discovered in 2005 (note the identification of this asteroid begins with 2005) by Tucson’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
It will be so close that NASA spokesman says:
Yeomans said that with new radar capabilities at Goldstone in California — part of NASA’s Deep Space Network — there is a good chance of obtaining radar imaging of 2005 YU55 down to the 5-meter resolution level. Doing so, he said, would mean obtaining higher spatial resolution of the object than that attained by recent spacecraft flyby missions.
“So we like to think of this opportunity as a close flyby mission with Earth as the spacecraft,” Yeomans told SPACE.com. “When combined with ground-based optical and near-infrared observations, the radar data should provide a fairly complete picture of one of the larger potentially hazardous asteroids,” he said.
More about this flyby is available on the Fox News posting which you can read by clicking here.
There is an interesting site that daily posts the upcoming near Earth fly bys and can be seen by clicking here.
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