The asteroid, called 3200 Phaethon, measures three miles (five kilometres) in diameter, and is classed as 'potentially hazardous. At its closest at 22:00 GMT (17:00 ET) on Saturday 16th December, the asteroid is estimated to be around 6.4 million miles away from our planet – 27 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.
It will be the closest this asteroid has been to Earth since December 16, 1974, when it was around 5 million miles away, although we were blissfully unaware at the time. In a statement about the asteroid, which was first discovered in 1983, a spokesperson for Nasa said: 'With a diameter of about 5km, Phaethon is the third largest near-Earth asteroid classified as "Potentially Hazardous".'
During its fly-by the the space agency hopes to take detailed images of the asteroid.
The Nasa spokesperson said: 'Phaethon will approach within 0.069 au of Earth on 2017 December 16 when it will be a strong radar imaging target at Goldstone and Arecibo.
'This will be the best opportunity to date for radar observations of this asteroid and we hope to obtain detailed images.
'The images should be excellent for obtaining a detailed 3D model.'
The next pass is predicted to be in 2093 when it is expected to pass at just over 1.8 million miles (2.9 million kilometres) away. But Phaethon's orbit puts its origins in a region between Mars and Jupiter where asteroids commonly originate.
Typically, icy comets come from colder regions of space beyond Neptune.
In a statement, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University said: 'Apparently, this asteroid was once a much bigger object.
'But its many approaches to the sun have caused it to crumble into smaller pieces which eventually formed this meteor shower.
'If so, the asteroid itself could be the residue of a comet nucleus.
'The asteroid's extremely elongated orbit, thanks to which it sometimes gets to the Sun closer than Mercury and it sometimes moves away farther than Mars, is another argument in favour
No comments:
Post a Comment