Carrier-Sized Asteroid to Pass Earth on Tuesday

November 6, 2011 — It’s big, very big. And very rare. So rare that U.S. scientists are eager to get a look of the massive asteroid known as 2005 YU55, which will fly by Earth on Tuesday. "This is not a potentially hazardous asteroid, just a good opportunity to study one," said National Science Foundation astronomer Thomas Statler. The circular asteroid, which is the size of an aircraft carrier, will come within 202,000 miles of Earth, closer than the moon, NASA said. The encounter will be the closest by an asteroid of that size in more than 30 years, AFP reported, and a similar event will not happen again until 2028 when asteroid (153814) 2001 WN5 will pass by. However, those who want to see 2005 YU55 will need a telescope. The asteroid is "going to be pretty faint when it flies by," said Scott Fisher, program director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Astronomical Sciences. "It will not be visible to the naked eye.” In fact, AFP reported that viewers would need a telescope that has a mirror at least six inches in size to see it. The best time and place to see it will be early evening on November 8 from the East Coast of the U.S. Astronomers who have studied the object, part of the C-class of asteroids, say it is very dark, like the color of charcoal, and quite porous. It was first discovered in 2005 by Robert McMillan of the Spacewatch Project, a solar-system-scanning group of scientists near Tucson, Arizona. While 2005 YU55 will stay a safe distance away, it is part of a crew of 1,262 big asteroids circling the Sun and measuring more than 500 feet across that NASA classifies as "potentially hazardous." "We want to study these asteroids so if one does look like it may hit us someday, we'll know what to do about it," Statler said. An asteroid of 2005 YU55's size landing in the ocean would trigger a magnitude-7.0 earthquake and 70-foot-high tsunami waves some 60 miles away, says Jay Melosh of Purdue University in Indiana. Such impacts are thought to come about once every 100,000 years, USA Today reported. NASA said the last time a space rock this big approached Earth was 1976.

The near-Earth asteroid 2005 YU55 — on the list of potentially dangerous asteroids — was observed with the Arecibo Telescope's planetary radar on April 19, 2010, when it was about 1.5 million miles from Earth. Credit: Arecibo Observatory/Michael Nolan The trajectory of the asteroid 2005 YU55 when it flies by Earth on November 8. Illustration credit: NASA

• 2012 - 02/22 - Borschberg Begins Simulated 72-Hour Solar Flight
• 2012 - 02/20 - NASA Celebrates 50 Years of Americans in Space
• 2012 - 02/16 - Tiny Robots Swarm Fly in Formation
• 2012 - 02/16 - Civil War Balloon Replica to Take Flight This Summer
• 2012 - 02/09 - Application Deadline Approaches for EAA Scholarship