The orbit of a 150 foot wide asteroid that zipped past the Earth in February, has an orbit so much like the Earth’s that astronomer’s expect it back next year.

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March 15, 2012 7:42 pm Robert Zimmerman

Duck! The orbit of a 150 foot wide asteroid that zipped past the Earth in February, has an orbit that will bring it past the Earth again on February 15, 2013 by less than 15,000 miles.

The team use several automated telescopes to scan the sky, and the discovery came somewhat serendipitously after they decided to search areas of the sky where asteroids are not usually seen. “A preliminary orbit calculation shows that 2012 DA14 has a very Earth-like orbit with a period of 366.24 days, just one more day than our terrestrial year, and it ‘jumps’ inside and outside of the path of Earth two times per year,” says Jaime.

While an impact with Earth has been ruled out on the asteroid’s next visit, astronomers will use that close approach for more studies and calculate the Earth and Moon’s gravitational effects on it.

Because this newly discovered asteroid passes so close and frequently to both the Earth and Moon, astronomers will need a lot more data before they can pin down its orbit precisely, and thus predict the chances of a collision in the near future.

2 comments

wodun

March 16, 2012 at 2:44 am

It would be cool if NASA or someone else landed a prob on this and other asteroids with dangerous orbits to sample composition and send back data on their orbits in order to improve predictions.
Bill Blomberg

March 16, 2012 at 8:58 pm

Agreed wodun, we should tag asteroids with instruments as they pass and turn them into science platforms. Studying a long period object would be quite interesting.

Think this thing will pose a danger to our satellites? Like the ones in geosync orbit?

The orbit of a 150 foot wide asteroid that zipped past the Earth in February, has an orbit so much like the Earth’s that astronomer’s expect it back next year.

2 comments

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