April 6th, 2010
Newly Discovered Asteroid Will Pass by Earth April 8
Written by
Nancy Atkinson
Orbit of asteroid 2010 GA6. Image credit: NASA/JPL
Good to know the
Spaceguard teams are keeping an eye out for us. The eagle-eyed observers at the Catalina Sky Survey have spotted
an asteroid which will pass relatively close to
Earth this Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 23:06 U.T.C. (4:06 p.m. PDT, 7:06 pm EDT). But it should pose no problem, as at the time of closest approach
asteroid 2010 GA6 will be about 359,000 kilometers (223,000 miles) away from Earth � about 9/10ths the distance from to the
moon. The asteroid is approximately 22 meters (71 feet) wide.
"Fly bys of near-Earth objects within
the moon's
orbit occur every few weeks," said Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
This one, however, is a bit bigger than other recent asteroid alerts NASA's Near Earth Observation program has issued. In November 2009, a
7-meter asteroid called 2009 VA came within 14,000 km (8,700 miles) of Earth and in January,
2010 AL30 was about 10-15 meters long and came within only 128,000 km (about 80,000 miles).
NASA's NEO program, also called Spaceguard, discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them and plots their
orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our
planet.
So while you're waiting for this one to pass by you can read
Don Yeoman's top ten favorite asteroid facts.
The Catalina
telescope is in Tucson, Arizona.
For more information
about asteroids and near-Earth objects, visit
NASA's Asteroid Watch page.
Asteroid to Pass by Earth Today
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