NASA Releases Updated Radar Movie of Asteroid 2005 YU55

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DC Agle 818-393-9011
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Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
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Video advisory: 2011-351 Nov. 11, 2011

NASA Releases Updated 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=2011-351&cid=release_2011-351

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://www.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 .

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