NASA is reporting that scientists have spotted a mile-wide asteroid in deep space, but assure U.S. citizens they have nothing to worry about. The asteroid won't be anywhere near our planet for a good 200 years.
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California used their Deep Space Network antenna to capture three radar views of the 2007 PA8 asteroid. The pictures were taken on Oct. 28 and Oct. 30.
As of Wednesday the meteor was over 4 million miles away from earth. In comparison, that's 17 times the distance between the earth and the moon according to MSNBC.
"The radar images of asteroid 2007 PA8 indicate that it is an elongated, irregularly shaped object approximately one mile (1.6 km) wide, with ridges and perhaps craters," officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., wrote in an image description on Monday. "The data also indicate that 2007 PA8 rotates very slowly, roughly once every three to four days."
Asteroid PA8 was discovered first in 2007 by astronomers with the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory according to NASA. The new images shows the asteroid in a light scientists have never seen before as they are now able to study and fully examine the meteor for the first time.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the space agency's Near-Earth Object Program Office and involves the Asteroid Watch program according to NASA.
This is the second time that NASA has used the radar to study an asteroid as they observed the 2005 YU55 almost a year ago today. On Nov. 8 NASA was able to see the YU55 as it passed well beyond earth's orbit. That asteroid was an estimated 1,300 feet wide according to MSNBC.
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