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Asteroid
2014 HQ124 approached Earth at a close
distance early Sunday, coming within 777,000
miles (1.25 million kilometers) at its
nearest approach, or about 3.25 times the
distance from Earth to the moon and
traveling at a speed of 31,000 mph (50,000
km/h)
NASA
researchers bounced radio signals off the
huge near-Earth asteroid 2014 HQ124,
nicknamed "The Beast" by some, as
it flew by Earth on June 8, 2014 six weeks
after its discovery.
The images
are among the most detailed radar views of
an asteroid ever acquired, according to
agency officials.
The
Earth-based radar observations taken over
four hours on Sunday revealed that the
asteroid is at least 1,200 feet (370 m)
wide. The images show the asteroid likely is
made up of two lobes, which may have been
separate once but are now fused together.
The images were created over four hours of
observations using antennas at Goldstone,
California, and the 1000-foot (305-meter)
Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
"This
may be a double object, or 'contact binary,'
consisting of two objects that form a single
asteroid with a lobed shape," said
Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
If an
asteroid this size did slam into Earth, it
could unleash catastrophic damage, with the
potential to wipe out an entire metropolitan
area, researchers said.
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