Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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An asteroid the size of a house is set to pass close to the Earth on Thursday.
The space rock will hurtle past our planet at a distance of about 42,000km (26,000 miles), bringing it within the Moon's orbit and just above the altitude of communication satellites.
Nasa scientists say there is no risk of an impact, but the flyby does provide them with the opportunity to test their asteroid-warning systems.
A global network of telescopes will be closely monitoring the object.
Paul Chodas, manager of Nasa's Centre for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told BBC News: "We are going to use this asteroid to practise the system that would observe an asteroid, characterise it and compute how close it is going to come, in case some day we have one that is on the way inbound and might hit."
Asteroid flyby to test warning systems
This will be cool.
The space rock will hurtle past our planet at a distance of about 42,000km (26,000 miles), bringing it within the Moon's orbit and just above the altitude of communication satellites.
Nasa scientists say there is no risk of an impact, but the flyby does provide them with the opportunity to test their asteroid-warning systems.
A global network of telescopes will be closely monitoring the object.
Paul Chodas, manager of Nasa's Centre for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told BBC News: "We are going to use this asteroid to practise the system that would observe an asteroid, characterise it and compute how close it is going to come, in case some day we have one that is on the way inbound and might hit."
Asteroid flyby to test warning systems
This will be cool.
