NASA’s Goldstone planetary radar system recently detected two near-Earth asteroids, 2024 MK and 2011 UL21, flying past our planet. Perhaps a little disturbingly, one of them was only discovered 13 days before it was due to safely fly past our planet. Earthbut scientists at NASA Jet propulsion laboratory (JPL) in Southern California assured that it never posed a threat. Nevertheless, the images they were able to collect were extremely revealing.
“There was no risk that any of the near-Earth objects would hit our planet, but the radar observations made during these two approaches will provide valuable training for planetary defenseas well as information about their size, orbit, rotation, surface details, and clues about their composition and formation,” the team wrote in a press release.
The Goldstone Solar System Radar is located in the desert near Barstow, California. With its 70-meter-long and fully steerable antenna (DSS-14) – the world’s only fully steerable radar for high-resolution ranging and imaging – it covers the entire sky and was designed to study interesting objects within the Solar System in the last three decades.
During this time he managed to collect valuable information about other planets, from mercury To Saturnand has supported numerous exploration missions, such as the Mars Exploration Rovers, Cassini’s Saturn Expedition, the Hayabusa asteroid research missions, the SOHO Recovery of the solar observation probe Lunar Prospector and the Venus– Study of the Magellan Project.
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As seen this week, it has also been used to observe near-Earth Asteroidsto avoid potential impact hazards and identify targets for future exploration missions. Radar is a powerful tool for studying asteroid properties and orbits – the ground station sends radio waves to the asteroids and then receives reflected signals from which scientists can extract relevant information. If the “echo” of an object is strong enough, radar imaging can achieve spatial resolution to identify features as small as 10 meters (32 yards) in size.
Hello asteroids, goodbye asteroids
On June 27, the radar system tracked the asteroid 2011 UL21 as it passed by Earth at a distance of 6.6 million kilometers. As its name suggests, the asteroid is known for NASA It has been known to scientists since 2011 and was discovered during the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona.
With a diameter of about 1.6 kilometers, this object was the first to come close enough to be detected by an Earth-based radar, allowing scientists to determine that it is roughly spherical in shape and that it is accompanied by its own “moon” that orbits the asteroid at a distance of about 3 kilometers.
“About two-thirds of asteroids of this size are thought to be binary star systems. Their discovery is particularly important because by measuring their relative positions we can estimate their mutual orbits, masses and densities, which in turn provides important information about their possible formation,” said Lance Benner, principal investigator at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who co-led the observations.
Although NASA scientists say 2011 UL21 was classified as potentially dangerous due to its size, calculations of the asteroid’s orbit suggest it will pose no real threat in the near future.
Then, just two days later, another asteroid appeared. The same team observed asteroid 2024 MK passing our planet at a distance of just 295,000 kilometers, just over three-quarters of the distance between the moon and the Earth. According to the team, such approaches are relatively rare, but provide valuable insights that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.
“This was an extraordinary opportunity to study the physical properties of a near-Earth asteroid and obtain detailed images of it,” said Benner.
2024 MK was first discovered on June 16 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) at the Sutherland Observing Station in South Africa. “Its orbit was altered by Earth’s gravity as it passed by, increasing its orbital period from 3.3 years by The sun by about 24 days,” the team explained in the press release.
On June 29, scientists again sent radio waves to 2024 MK – but the Timereceived the returning signal with Goldstone’s 34-meter-long DSS-13 antenna instead of DSS-14. “This ‘bistatic’ radar observation provided a detailed image of the asteroid’s surface, revealing depressions, ridges, and boulders about 10 meters wide,” they wrote.
This asteroid, about 150 meters wide, appears elongated and angular, with pronounced flat and rounded areas. Although it is also classified as a potentially dangerous asteroid, calculations of its future motion show that it poses no threat to our planet in the foreseeable future.
