Surprise! Earth Passing (today) Asteroid 1998 QE2 Has a moon

[G_j]

http://www.universetoday.com/102532/surprise-earth-passing-asteroid-1998-qe2-has-a-moon/


Late yesterday, NASA turned the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California towards Asteroid 1998 QE2 as it was heading towards its closest approach to Earth, and they got a big surprise: the asteroid is a binary system. 1998 QE2 itself is 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) in diameter, and the newly found orbiting moon is about 600 meters in diameter.

The radar images were taken were taken on May 29, 2013, when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth.

“Radar really helps to pin down the orbit of an asteroid as well as the size of it,” said Paul Chodas of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program office, speaking during a JPL webcast about this asteroid on May 30. “We now know our size estimates were pretty good, but finding it was a binary was surprising.”
NASA said that about 16 percent of asteroids are binary or even triple systems.
Each of the images above are snippets of about 5 minutes of radar data. You can watch a movie of the data, below:

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http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/2374971

Giant asteroid flyby sets off study

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- An asteroid as long as the Golden Gate Bridge will pass harmlessly by Earth on Friday as NASA and private firms aim to explore or commercially exploit these rocky interplanetary bodies rich with precious metals and rare minerals.

But coming just three months after a meteor explosion injured more than 1,000 people in Russia, the flyby also will point up the need to hunt down and track asteroids that threaten Earth — to develop capabilities to deflect incoming asteroids that could cause planetary catastrophe.

"In response to a question we always get — 'Can you protect the planet?' — the answer to that is 'no,'" NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, a former astronaut, said Thursday on the eve of asteroid 1998 QE2's closest approach to Earth.

"But if we're able to get into space, and humans are able to redirect an asteroid, or deflect it in some slight way, we may be getting close to the day when we can say, 'Yes, we can protect the planet.' "

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[Egalitarian Thug]

1. Think about it. We possess, or nearly possess the means to detect and prevent

the next, inevitable ELE, but we can't because quarterly profit reports are so much more important and the resources won't be allocated.