Isaias Lockdown to Track Asteroid for NASA
University of Central Florida | Arecibo Observatory | 2020 Aug 07
The NSF facility, managed by UCF, determines that a newly discovered asteroid won’t threaten Earth.
The Earth has one less asteroid to worry about thanks to the research of an international team of scientists at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Asteroid 2020 NK1 was spotted in early July by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey team at the University of Hawaii. Little was known about the asteroid, making it difficult to predict exactly where the asteroid would travel in the future. It was estimated to be 1,600 feet in diameter, about the length of five football fields. Before the Arecibo observations, 2020 NK1 was calculated to be one of the biggest threats out of all known asteroids on NASA’s list of potential impactors, with about one chance in 70,000 of impacting the Earth between 2086 and 2101.
Arecibo’s Planetary Radar Group made it a priority to observe 2020 NK1 when it came within range – within 5 million miles – of the facility’s powerful instruments. In this case, the time period was brief, July 30-31, just about the same time Tropical Storm Isaias was expected to slam into the island. ...
The team of scientists and telescope operators was able to observe the asteroid for two and half hours, collecting precise measurements of the asteroid’s speed and distance from Earth as well as high-resolution images of the asteroid. ...
The observations showed the asteroid is not expected to get close enough to Earth to pose a danger in the future, with its closest approach coming in 2043 when it will pass about 2.25 million miles from Earth – or more than 9 times farther away than the Moon, the team concluded.
The obtained radar images reveal an elongated shape and a diameter along its longest axis of approximately .6 mile. ...
