Asteroid 1998 QE2 will not Collide with Earth

It’s 1.7 miles long asteroid named 1998 QE2 with a surface covered in a sticky black substance is making a fly by on Friday May 31, 2013. If it had impacted the Earth, it would probably resulted in total global extinction. Good thing it is just making a flyby on that Friday of May 31st!

Asteroid 1998 QE2 will make its closest pass to Earth on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. PDT.

1998 QE2 was discovered LINEAR on August 19, 1998. This object was observed by the Spitzer Space
Telescope by Trilling et al. (2010), who estimated that it has a diameter of 2.7 km and a dark optical albedo of 0.06. Otherwise its physical properties are unknown.

1998 QE2 will approach within 0.039 AU (15 lunar distances) on May 31, 2013, when it will be a very strong radar target at both Goldstone and Arecibo. The asteroid will approach from the
south and enter Goldstone’s declination range on May 28 and Arecibo’s on June 5.

We are planning an extensive campaign of observations at both observatories NASA says. NASA is hoping to achieve resolutions as fine as 3.75 m.

This is going to be one of the best radar targets of the year says NASA.

Observations are scheduled on 7 dates at Goldstone bewteen May 30-June 9.
The schedule at Arecibo isn’t available yet, but we expect that at least several
dates will be scheduled starting on June 5.

1998 QE2 is already well-positioned for optical observations for telescopes in the southern hemisphere, and it will be bright all the way through the end.

Scientists are not sure where this unusually large space rock, which was discovered 15 years ago, originated from. But the mysterious sooty substance on its surface could indicate it may be the result of a comet that flew too close to the sun, said Amy Mainzer, who tracks near-Earth objects at
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. It might also have leaked out of the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, she said.

We will know more after the asteroid zips closer to Earth and scientists using the Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico can get a better look at it. Astronomers at both observatories plan to track it closely from May 30 to June 9.

At its closest approach the asteroid will still be 3.6 million miles from our planet (about 15 times the distance between the Earth and the moon), but it will be close enough for these powerful radar antennas to see features as small as 12 feet across.

“With radar we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own characteristics,” Lance Benner, JPL’s principal investigator for Goldstone radar observations, said in a statement.

There is no chance that asteroid 1998 QE2 could collide with Earth this go-around, and its next close approach won’t be until 2119.

Still, Mainzer said the size of the asteroid, and its potential for mass destruction, should remind us that there are some scary things flying around in space.

1998 QE2 NASA Chart