Thursday, December 28, 2017

Asteroid YZ4, Which Was NOT Spotted by NASA until Christmas Day, Just Flew Past Earth

WTH?
It flew by closer than the orbit of the moon, and though only the size of a bus it would wreck your day should it land on your head.

From The Express:

Asteroid 2017 YZ4: What time will the 'unseen' asteroid pass Earth TODAY?
A NEWLY discovered asteroid known as Asteroid 2017 YZ4 will skim past the Earth today in what astronomers consider a “near miss”. But what time will the asteroid fly past?

Asteroid YZ4, which was not spotted by NASA until Christmas Day, will hurtle past Earth at a distance of just 139,433 miles - a stone’s throw in astronomical terms - with the Moon orbiting about 238,000 miles away from Earth.  
A NASA spokesman said this is the first known asteroid to flyby Earth within one lunar distance since two flew past us 35 minutes apart on November 21.
He said: “As of December 24, there are 17,495 known Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) around our planet. 17,389 are asteroids.
“This year, we discovered 1,985 new near Earth asteroids. There were 1,888 such objects discovered in 2016 and 1,571 in 2015."

The asteroid is due to pass Earth at a relative speed of 9.55 kilometres per second at 3.56pm GMT on Thursday December 28, according to NASA’s Solar System Dynamics website....MORE