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Asteroid to make close pass by the Earth next week

LOS ANGELES: An asteroid at least 500 feet long, will make a rare close pass by the Earth next week, but there is no chance of an impact, scientists reported on Thursday.

The asteroid, known as 2007 TU24, is expected to whiz by the Earth on Tuesday with its closest approach at 334,000 miles, or about one-and-a half times the distance of Earth to the moon.

The night-time encounter should be bright enough for medium-sized telescopes to get a glimpse, said Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which tracks potentially dangerous space rocks.

However, next week’s asteroid pass “has no chance of hitting, or affecting the Earth,” Mr. Yeomans said.

An actual collision of a similar-sized object with the Earth occurs on an average every 37,000 years.

Spotted last October by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona, 2007 TU24 is estimated to be between 500 feet and 2,000 feet long. The next time an asteroid this size will fly this close to the Earth will be in 2027.

Scientists plan to point the Goldstone radar telescope in California and the Arecibo radar telescope in Puerto Rico at the asteroid and observe its path before and after its closest approach to the Earth. Researchers will use instruments to measure its rotation and composition as well. The rendezvous comes a day before another asteroid is projected to pass close to Mars. — AP

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