Asteroid Making Close Encounter with Earth Today Has a Moon
Radar of Asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon.
NASA
New radar data obtained by NASA shows Asteroid 1998 QE2 has a moon. The asteroid will get no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon.
The new radar data was obtained on May 29th when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth. 1998 QE2 measures approximately 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) in diameter.
According to NASA about 16 percent of asteroids are binary or triple systems. The data in
the video os is looped one time.
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