Space & Astronomy

Tiny moon discovered around giant asteroid

By T.K. Randall
January 27, 2015 ·  46 comments

The asteroid with its moon visible at the top of the picture. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Measuring 325m across, the huge space rock passed within a short distance of our planet and headed back out in to space in what is likely to have been its closest encounter for two centuries.

What astronomers weren't expecting however was the discovery that the mammoth asteroid had brought a companion along for the ride in the form of a tiny moon measuring just 70m in diameter which was picked up in photographs taken from the ground.

The next asteroid to make a close approach will be 1999 AN10, an even larger space rock over a kilometer across with the potential to fly within 36,000km of our planet in the year 2027.While most of the larger asteroids in our solar system have already been picked up by astronomers, the real threat could lie in smaller objects between 100m and 1km in size.

Being more plentiful and harder to detect, any one of these mid-size asteroids could cause widespread destruction if they were to hit us, even if they aren't big enough to wipe us out.

There are currently estimated to be around 20,000 mid-size space rocks hurtling around us and so far only a small percentage of these have been successfully identified and tracked.

Source: BBC News | Comments (46)

Tags: Asteroid, Earth