Earth-skimming Asteroid has Two Moons!

Written by Cheyenne MacDonald on . Posted in Current News

On September 1 2017, a massive asteroid measuring roughly 2.8 miles wide skimmed past Earth at just 4.4 million miles away, or 18 times the distance between our planet and the moon.

While it might sound far away, NASA says it’s the closest an asteroid of this size has come since it first began tracking near-Earth objects. Radar images captured during the August 29-Sept 1 flyby have now uncovered new details on the huge space rock, dubbed ‘Florence’ – and, they’ve revealed the asteroid has two small moons orbiting it.

Radar images captured during the August 29-Sept 1 flyby have now uncovered new details on the huge space rock, dubbed ¿Florence¿ ¿ and, they¿ve revealed the asteroid has two small moons orbiting it

 

Radar images captured during the August 29-Sept 1 flyby have now uncovered new details on the huge space rock, dubbed ‘Florence’ – and, they’ve revealed the asteroid has two small moons orbiting it. These can be seen as the small bright streaks in the images above

ASTEROID ‘FLORENCE’

Asteroid Florence was first spotted in 1981, and is estimated to be 2.7 miles (4.4 kilometers) wide.

It will fly past Earth at a distance of about 4.4 million miles (7 million kilometers), or about 18 Earth-moon distances.

This is the closest an asteroid this large has come since NASA began its NEO-tracking program.

The flyby in September will be the closest it’s come to Earth since 1890.

And, it won’t come this close again until 2500.

 For astronomers, the close pass was an unprecedented opportunity to study it through ground-based radar observations. As nearly two-thirds of near-Earth asteroids are known to have a satellite, NASA suspected Florence would have a partner as well. But, they found it has not one, but two moons circling it.

‘The sizes of the two moons are not yet well known, but they are probably between 100-300 meters (300-1,000 feet) across,’ according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

‘The times required for each moon to revolve around Florence are also not yet known precisely but appear to be roughly 8 hours for the inner moon and 22 to 27 hours for the outer moon.

‘The inner moon of the Florence system has the shortest orbital period of any of the moons of the 60 near-Earth asteroids known to have moons.’

The radar images also revealed new details on asteroid’s surface features, and confirmed that it is about 4.5 km (2.8 miles) in size. While it’s mostly round, the scientists have spotted a ridge along the equator, giving it a somewhat lumpy appearance.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

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