NASA Radar Spots Large, Peanut-Shaped Asteroid Prior to Flyby

NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar (located in California's Mojave Desert) collected and generated images of asteroid 2014 JO25 on April 18, 2017. At the time, the relatively large asteroid was 1.9 million miles from Earth. Asteroid 2014 JO25 was first discovered in May 2014, and has a contact binary structure - two lobes connected by a neck-like region. The largest of the asteroid's two lobes is estimated to be 2,000 feet across. The asteroid safely passed Earth at a distance of 1.1 million miles on April 19. The encounter is the closest the object will have come to Earth in 400 years and will be its closest approach for at least the next 500 years.

Transcript

00:00:01 Radar Images of Asteroid 2014 JO25 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology This movie of asteroid 2014 JO25 was generated on April 18, 2017, using radar images obtained by NASA's 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California. The asteroid has a contact binary structure -- two lobes connected by a neck-like region. The largest of the asteroid's two lobes is

00:00:20 estimated to be 2,000 feet (610 meters) across. [ ♪ ] The asteroid will approach to within 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) of Earth on April 19. The Goldstone observations were conducted when the asteroid was 1.9 million miles (3 million kilometers) from Earth. The resolution of the radar images is about 25 feet (7.5 meters) per pixel. There are no future flybys by 2014 JO25 as close as this one for more than 400 years.

00:01:13 30 images were used to create the movie shown at two different speeds. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 00:01:25.652,00:00:00.000 California Institute of Technology