This is around 17 times the distance between the Moon and the Earth.
As the name suggests, this asteroid was discovered back in 2011 by the Catalina Sky Survey, in Tucson, Arizona.However, this was the first time when it came close enough to the Earth to be imaged by radar.
Though the nearly 1.5-kilometre-wide object has been classified as being potentially hazardous, calculations of its future orbits suggest that it will not pose a threat to the Earth for the foreseeable future.With the help of the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Goldstone Solar System Radar -- called Deep Space Station 14 (DSS-14) -- scientists transmitted radio waves to the asteroid and later received the reflected signals through the same antenna.
Besides determining that it is roughly spherical, they also discovered that it’s a binary system, which means that a smaller asteroid, or moonlet, orbits it from a distance of around three kilometres.On June 29, two days after the 2011 UL21, the same team of scientists observed the 2024 MK asteroid pass the Earth from a distance of only 295,000 kilometres.
This is a little more than three-quarters of the distance between the Moon and the Earth.The asteroid is about 500 feet (or 150 meters) wide and appears to be elongated and angular, having prominent flat and rounded regions.To observe this, they used DSS-14 to transmit radio waves to the object.
The Goldstone planetary radar of US space agency NASA's Deep Space Network has tracked two asteroids as they safely passed the Earth, providing valuable practice for planetary defence, along with information about their sizes, orbits, rotation and surface details.The two asteroids -- 2024 MK and 2011 UL21 -- were tracked recently by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, read a statement.Among them, one turned out to have a little moon orbiting it, while the second one had been discovered only 13 days before its closest approach to Earth, it stated, adding that there was "no risk of either near-Earth object impacting our planet".On June 27, the asteroid passed the Earth at a distance of 4.1 million miles (or 6.6 million kilometres). This is around 17 times the distance between the Moon and the Earth. As the name suggests, this asteroid was discovered back in 2011 by the Catalina Sky Survey, in Tucson, Arizona.However, this was the first time when it came close enough to the Earth to be imaged by radar. Though the nearly 1.5-kilometre-wide object has been classified as being potentially hazardous, calculations of its future orbits suggest that it will not pose a threat to the Earth for the foreseeable future.With the help of the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Goldstone Solar System Radar -- called Deep Space Station 14 (DSS-14) -- scientists transmitted radio waves to the asteroid and later received the reflected signals through the same antenna. Besides determining that it is roughly spherical, they also discovered that it’s a binary system, which means that a smaller asteroid, or moonlet, orbits it from a distance of around three kilometres.On June 29, two days after the 2011 UL21, the same team of scientists observed the 2024 MK asteroid pass the Earth from a distance of only 295,000 kilometres. This is a little more than three-quarters of the distance between the Moon and the Earth.The asteroid is about 500 feet (or 150 meters) wide and appears to be elongated and angular, having prominent flat and rounded regions.To observe this, they used DSS-14 to transmit radio waves to the object. But this time, they used Goldstone’s 114-foot (34-meter) DSS-13 antenna to receive the signal that bounced off the asteroid.“The result of this 'bistatic' radar observation is a detailed image of the asteroid’s surface, revealing concavities, ridges, and boulders about 30 feet (10 meters) wide," NASA stated.The space agency noted that close approaches of near-Earth objects the size of 2024 MK are "relatively rare" and usually occur about every couple of decades.2024 MK was first reported on June 16.
