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Newly Discovered Asteroid To Pass Within Geostationary Orbit Sunday

Posted by Soulskill on from the how's-that-space-program-coming-along dept.

theshowmecanuck writes: A newly found asteroid the size of a house will give earth a close flyby this weekend. It will pass just below satellites in geostationary orbit, and above New Zealand around 14:18 EDT / 18:18 GMT / 06:18 NZST this coming Sunday (Monday morning in NZ). "Asteroid 2014 RC was initially discovered on the night of August 31 by the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, and independently detected the next night by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope, located on the summit of Haleakal on Maui, Hawaii," NASA officials said in a statement.

7 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't that cutting it kinda close by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not the 34,000 km above earth part, but the "we discovered it a week ago" part.

    1. Re:Isn't that cutting it kinda close by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Insightful

      An asteroid the size of a house would have to be going extraordinarily fast to pose much of a threat to the planet as a whole.

    2. Re:Isn't that cutting it kinda close by RivenAleem · · Score: 4, Funny

      Who's house we taking about here?

    3. Re:Isn't that cutting it kinda close by Lost+Penguin · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wait till it starts transmitting a greeting..... /"Attention all planets of the solar federation".

      --
      I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
  2. 3:2 resonance by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What I find cool about this asteroid is that it's in a 1.5 year orbit. That means it's in a 3:2 resonance with Earth. So it'll come by again if you miss it this time, every 3 years.

    Normally you'd expect asteroids that makes this close an approach to Earth to have a bit of a change in orbital parameters after the flyby, but that 3:2 orbital ratio is unlikely to be a coincidence-- it looks like a resonant orbit, in which the Earth's gravitational perturbation has already modified the orbit until it reached that stable resonance.

    The small-body page allows you to propagate the orbit into the future, if you're interested. (Not a good tool to use if you're calculating missions, though-- you'll want a more accurate simulator! The V_infinity is a bit large for a rendezvous, though.)

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  3. Re:Can we see it? by geogob · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can expect a magnitude of +11.5 according to some sources. So no, definitely not visible to the naked eye. Should be easy with a good motorised telescope.

  4. Geostationary Orbit Sunday already? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    Geostationary Orbit Sunday

    I've only just recovered from Near Equatorial Tuesday!

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.