NASA has captured some of the clearest high resolution images ever taken of an asteroid that flew relatively close to Earth. It came within around 776 thousand miles from our planet, which is about three times farther away than the moon, but the pictures were taken a few days after when it was between 864 thousand miles and 902 thousand miles away.
NASA has captured some of the clearest high resolution images ever taken of an asteroid that flew relatively close to Earth.
It came within around 776 thousand miles from our planet, which is about three times farther away than the moon, but the pictures were taken a few days after when it was between 864 thousand miles and 902 thousand miles away.
The asteroid, nicknamed The Beast, is peanut-shaped, measuring at least 12 hundred feel long with a small lobe on the top and a larger lobe on the bottom.
The images were captured by NASA’s 70-meter Goldstone antenna working with the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and a smaller radio telescope located in California.
Lance Benner, a research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is quoted as saying: "By itself the Goldstone antenna can obtain images that show features as small as the width of a traffic lane on the highway. With Arecibo now able to receive our highest-resolution Goldstone signals, we can create a single system that improves the overall quality of the images."
