MEXICO: Radar signals were sent toward 1999 JD6 from NASA’s 70-meter DSS-14 antenna at the Goldstone Complex in California’s Mojave Desert, and received at the even larger NRAO Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.
Radar images of asteroids – gathered from millions of miles away in some cases – have resolutions as small as 12 feet, with 1999 JD6 at about 30 feet. In other words, approximately 19 times the distance between the moon and Earth. This asteroid also measures 1.2 miles across where NASA detected it using radio telescopes, obtaining its measurements from size, shape and rotation.
A contact binary is a type of asteroid that has two lobes stuck together – similar to the comet 67P which the European Space Agency is investigating through its Rosetta mission.
‘I’m interested in this particular asteroid because estimates of its size from previous observations, at infrared wavelengths, have not agreed, ‘ he said. “The radar data will allow us to conclusively resolve the mystery of its size to better understand this interesting little world”, he said. For those of us wishing to take a glance at the asteroid, NASA compiled a video showing 1999 JD6 completing its rotation in approximately seven hours and a half.
“The Goldstone antenna beams a radar signal at an asteroid and Green Bank receives the reflections”.
The asteroid that flew by our planet this past July 24 is called 1999 JD6. The asteroid is officially named 1999 JD6, and had made its closest approach on Friday, July 24 at 9:55 p.m. PDT, or July 25, 12:55 a.m. EDT.
Data from the new observations will be particularly useful to Sean Marshall, a graduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, whose doctoral research on 1999 JD6 is funded by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program.
Meanwhile, this Earth flyby at 4.5 million miles will only be observed again in 2054, July 25th. However, this data is still crucial for determining how big the asteroid is including its shape and rotation and its orbit trajectories in the future.
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