Flyby: Asteroid 1998 QE2 Is The Size Of The One That Killed The Dinosaurs - And Has Its Own Moon
Thursday, May 30, 2013 - 21:10
in Astronomy & Space
Asteroid 1998 QE2 will be its closest to Earth on Friday at 1:59 p.m. Pacific time. At 1.7 miles wide it is one of the larger asteroids to swing by Earth - about the size of the rock that wiped out the dinosaurs.Luckily, Asteroid 1998 QE2 will be a comfortable 3.6 million miles away.Astronomical bonus: it even has its own moon, a smaller rock circling it that is about about 2,000 feet wide.A sequence of radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2 was obtained on the evening of May 29, 2013, by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth, which is 15.6 lunar distances. read more