NASA’s Goldstone Planetary Radar System has recently recorded two near-Earth asteroids, 2024 MK and 2011 UL21, flying by our planet. Perhaps a little alarmingly, one was discovered just 13 days before it was safely bypassed earthbut scientists at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California assure that it has never posed a threat. However, the images they were able to collect were extremely informative.
“There was no danger of any near-Earth objects hitting our planet, but the radar observations made during these two close approaches will provide valuable practice for planetary protectionas well as information about their sizes, orbits, rotation, surface details, and data on 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 (230-foot-long) fully directional antenna (DSS-14) – the world’s only fully directional high-resolution range and imaging radar – it provides full-sky coverage and has been used to investigate objects of interest within solar system for the last three decades.
In that time, she has managed to gather invaluable information about other planets, from mercury THE Saturnand has supported numerous exploration missions, such as the Mars Exploration Rovers, the Cassini Saturn Expedition, the Hayabusa asteroid explorers, SOHO recovery of the solar observation probe, Lunar Prospector and Venus-Study of Magellan’s effort.
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As seen this week, it has also been used to track and study near Earth ASTEROIDS, helping to prevent potential impact hazards and identify targets for future exploration missions. Radar is a powerful tool for studying the properties and orbits of asteroids – the ground-based station transmits radio waves to asteroids, then receives reflected signals that scientists can use to gather relevant information. If an object’s “echo” is strong enough, the radar image can achieve the spatial resolution to identify features up to 10 meters (32 meters) in size.
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On June 27, the radar system tracked asteroid 2011 UL21 as it passed Earth at a distance of 4.1 million miles (6.6 million kilometers). As its name implies, the asteroid has been popular NASA scientists since 2011, after they were discovered during the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona.
About a mile wide (1.6 kilometers across), this object was the first to come close enough to be imaged by an Earth-based radar, allowing scientists to determine that its shape is roughly spherical and that it is associated with from her “moon”. orbits a distance of about 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) from the asteroid.
“About two-thirds of asteroids of this size are thought to be binary systems, and their discovery is particularly important because we can use measurements of their relative positions to estimate their mutual orbits, masses and densities, which provide key information about how they may have formed,” said Lance Benner, principal scientist at JPL who helped lead the observations.
While NASA scientists say that, due to its size, 2011 UL21 is classified as potentially hazardous, calculations of the asteroid’s orbit indicate that it will not pose any 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 184,000 miles (295,000 kilometers), just over three-quarters of the distance between MONDAY and Earth. Close approaches like this are relatively rare, according to the team, but provide valuable insights that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.
“This was an incredible opportunity to investigate the physical properties and obtain detailed images of a near-Earth asteroid,” Benner said.
2024 MK was first identified on June 16 by the Ground-Based Early Warning System (ATLAS) at the Sutherland Observatory in South Africa. “Its orbit was altered by Earth’s gravity as it passed, reducing its 3.3-year orbital period by about SUN with about 24 days”, says the team announcement.
On June 29, scientists again transmitted radio waves to 2024 MK – but, since time, received the return signal with Goldstone’s 114-foot (34-meter) DSS-13 antenna rather than the DSS-14. “This ‘bistatic’ radar survey produced a detailed image of the asteroid’s surface, revealing concavities, ridges and boulders about 30 feet (10 meters) across,” they wrote.
About 500 feet (150 meters) across, this asteroid appears to be elongated and angular, with prominent flat and rounded areas. Although it is also classified as a potentially dangerous asteroid, calculations of its future motion show that it does not pose a threat to our planet for the foreseeable future.