The asteroid 2015 TB145 is expected to brush our Earth at 78,000mph
NASA always has exciting yet informative things in their kitty! This time it is the astronomers are preparing for the return of a skull-shaped asteroid that's so dark, it barely reflects sunlight. The asteroid 2015 TB145 is expected to brush our Earth at 78,000mph.
NASA said they were monitoring the gigantic asteroid 2015 TB145 after it had a near miss two years ago. It zipped past as Brits went trick-or-treating on October 31, 2015, relatively close to Earth at 486,000km away - 1.3 times the distance to the moon. The dark object looks like a human skull in certain lights.
2015 TB145, as it is known, was first spotted in 2015 when it flew by Earth just a bit further away than the moon - on October 31, Halloween, no less. Despite being roughly 650m across, it wasn't spotted before then because it only reflects about 5 percent of the sunlight that hits it.
"This means that it is very dark, only slightly more reflective than charcoal," said Pablo Santos-Sanz from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, who suspects it might be an extinct comet.
But that's not the only dark secret astronomers uncovered. Radar imagery of the rock, nicknamed the 'Great Pumpkin', showed it looks remarkably like a human skull.
Don't expect it to bring death and destruction when it arrives in November however - it's expected to pass about 105 times further away than the moon. Good thing too, because it's traveling at 126,000 km/h and would make a crater 10km wide, asteroid impact expert Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, said in 2015.
NASA said they were monitoring the gigantic asteroid 2015 TB145 after it had a near miss two years ago. It zipped past as Brits went trick-or-treating on October 31, 2015, relatively close to Earth at 486,000km away - 1.3 times the distance to the moon. The dark object looks like a human skull in certain lights.
2015 TB145, as it is known, was first spotted in 2015 when it flew by Earth just a bit further away than the moon - on October 31, Halloween, no less. Despite being roughly 650m across, it wasn't spotted before then because it only reflects about 5 percent of the sunlight that hits it.
"This means that it is very dark, only slightly more reflective than charcoal," said Pablo Santos-Sanz from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, who suspects it might be an extinct comet.
But that's not the only dark secret astronomers uncovered. Radar imagery of the rock, nicknamed the 'Great Pumpkin', showed it looks remarkably like a human skull.
Don't expect it to bring death and destruction when it arrives in November however - it's expected to pass about 105 times further away than the moon. Good thing too, because it's traveling at 126,000 km/h and would make a crater 10km wide, asteroid impact expert Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, said in 2015.