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Asteroid and Comet Watch

NASA RELEASES UPDATED RADAR MOVIE OF ASTEROID 2005 YU55

NASA

November 11, 2011

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/yu55-20111111.html

(see link for video)

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA scientists working with the 230-foot-wide

(70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., have

released a second, longer, and more refined, movie clip of asteroid

2005 YU55.  The images were generated from data collected at Goldstone

on Nov. 7, 2011, between 11:24 a.m. and 1:35 p.m. PST (2:24 p.m. and

4:35 p.m. EST).

The movie clip can be found at: http://1.usa.gov/YU55 .

Each of the 28 frames required 20 minutes of data collection by the

Goldstone radar.  At the time of the observations, 2005 YU55 was

approximately 860,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) from Earth.  The

resolution is about 13 feet (4 meters) per pixel.  2005 YU55 takes

approximately 18 hours to complete one rotation, so the rotation in

the movie appears much more rapid than the actual asteroid rotation

speed.

The Goldstone observations utilized a new system to obtain images with

a resolution of 4 meters, which is five times finer than the highest

resolution previously possible at Goldstone.

"The encounter with 2005 YU55 has produced an enormous amount of data

that is still being processed." said radar astronomer Lance Benner,

the principal investigator for the 2005 YU55 Goldstone observations,

from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.  "The

sequence of images we obtained shows unprecedented fine-scale detail

on this asteroid, which is comparable in size to the Empire State

Building.  The Goldstone images show evidence for concavities, a ridge

near the asteroid's equator, and numerous features that may be large

boulders."

The trajectory of asteroid 2005 YU55 is well understood.  Although the

asteroid is in an orbit that regularly brings it to the vicinity of

Earth, (and Venus and Mars), 2005 YU55's 2011 encounter with Earth was

the closest for at least the last 200 years.  NASA detects, tracks,

and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using

both ground- and space-based telescopes.  The Near-Earth Object

Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these

objects, characterizes a subset of them, and plots their orbits to

determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

JPL manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's Science

Mission Directorate in Washington.  JPL is a division of the

California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch and via Twitter at

http://ww.twitter.com/asteroidwatch . More information about asteroid

radar research is at: http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/ . More information

about the Deep Space Network is at: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn

.

D.C. Agle 818-393-9011

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726

NASA Headquarters, Washington