A house-sized asteroid is set to miss Earth by a whisker later today, passing just 7,600 miles (12.000 km) above us.
The asteroid was discovered by the LINEAR near-Earth object discovery team in Socorro, New Mexico, just last week.
Peter Lake is an amateur astronomer from Australia that captured some of the first images of what will be a very close pass of Earth by asteroid 2011 MD. (See the image here.)
The image was actually taken yesterday with a 20-inch telescope in New Mexico controlled via his iPhone, through the Global Rent-A-Scope program. Isn't technology wonderful?
The asteroid, which was only detected last week, is about 25 to 55 feet (8 to 18 m) across, is expected to pass less than 8,000 miles above Earth’s surface on Monday, June 27th. Near-Earth asteroid 2011 MD will reach its closest point to Earth at about 1:00 PM EDT (17:00 GMT) when it will be observable from South Africa and parts of Antarctica. The approach will also be visible across Australia, New Zealand, southern and eastern Asia and the western Pacific.
The asteroid is in a very Earth-like orbit about the Sun, says NASA, while some astronomers reckon it may actually be just a piece of space junk. However, an analysis of its orbit indicates there's no chance it will actually hit us. In any case, at just under 20 meters in diameter, it would most likely fragment and burn up before impact anyway. That would be exciting, and make quite a show, but that’s about it. On its way back out again, after its orbit's been bent by gravity, it will actually pass well inside the ring of geostationary man-made satellites orbiting the Earth. There is a tiny chance, though, that it could hit a man-made satellite... We'll just have to wait and see.
Click here to see its trajectory.
Watch the video HERE - on YouTube.
According to Minor Planet Center’s ranking charts 2011MD’s trip will be the fifth-closest recorded Asteroid event. The last asteroid to impact earth was "2008TC3" which was detected on 7 October 2008, just 19 hours before it burned up in the atmosphere over northern Sudan.
A lager asteroid is due to buzz the Earth on November 8 this year. Near-Earth asteroid 2005YU55, which is around 400 meters across, will pass within 0.85 lunar distances from the Earth.
NASA says it poses no threat of an Earth collision for at least 100 years. However, it will be the closest yet approach by an object this large that we know about in advance. Nothing comparable will happen again until 2028 when asteroid (153814) 2001 WN5 will pass within 0.6 lunar distances of the Earth.
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