NASA Releases Radar Movie of Asteroid 2005 YU55

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DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Image/Video advisory: 2011-346 Nov. 8, 2011

NASA Releases Radar Movie of Asteroid 2005 YU55

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-346&cid=release_2011-346

PASADENA, Calif. -- Scientists working with the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space
Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., have generated a short 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). They are the highest-resolution images
ever generated by radar of a near-Earth object.

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

Each of the six frames required 20 minutes of data collection by the Goldstone radar. At the
time, 2005 YU55 was approximately 860,000 miles (1.38 million kilometers) away from Earth.
Resolution is 4 meters per pixel.

"The movie shows the small subset of images obtained at Goldstone on November 7 that have
finished processing. By animating a sequence of radar images, we can see more surface detail
than is visible otherwise," said radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the
2005 YU55 observations, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The
animation reveals a number of puzzling structures on the surface that we don't yet understand.
To date, we've seen less than one half of the surface, so we expect more surprises."

The trajectory of asteroid 2005 YU55 is well understood. At the point of closest approach today
at 3:28 p.m. PST (6:28 p.m. EST/2328 UTC), it was no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600
kilometers), as measured from the center of Earth. The gravitational influence of the asteroid will
have no detectable effect on anything here on Earth, including our planet's tides or tectonic
plates. Although 2005 YU55 is in an orbit that regularly brings it to the vicinity of Earth (and
Venus and Mars), the 2011 encounter with Earth is the closest this space rock has come for at
least the last 200 years.

The last time a space rock as big came as close to Earth was in 1976, although astronomers did
not know about the flyby at the time. The next known approach of an asteroid this large will be
in 2028.

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 . 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 .

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