YU55 is a black 400 metre sphere
“Although classified as a potentially hazardous object, 2005 YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over at least the next 100 years, according to NASA. However, this will be the closest approach to date by an object this large that we know about in advance and an event of this type will not happen again until 2028
The 1300-foot-wide (400 metres) asteroid, which is more than one and a half times the length of a soccer pitch, will pass within 0.85 lunar distances of the Earth on November 8, 2011.
Discovered on December 28, 2005 by Robert McMillan of the Spacewatch Program near Tucson, Arizona, 2005 YU55 is believed to be a very dark, nearly spherical object.
NASA says it will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT (6 p.m. GMT) on Thursday 29 Sept 2011 to ‘reveal near-Earth asteroid findings ‘.
The Daily Mail reported on Tuesday that the ESA is planning to fire an ‘impactor’ satellite into a ‘test’ asteroid in 2015 to see if the object’s trajectory can be altered.
In late June 2011, earth experienced one of its closest encounters with an asteroid in recent years. But as NASA indicated in the days ahead of the ‘cosmic close call’, the encounter was so close that Earth’s gravity sharply altered the asteroid’s trajectory and prevented the space rock from impacting the planet.
read more HERE http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2011/09/27/nasa-to-make-announcement-on-near-earth-asteroids-2/
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