Every few days or so I like to check the “Close Approaches” page of JPL’s Near-Earth Object Program, just to see what sorts of cosmic objects are whizzing by our planet; how big they are, when they’ll come, and how far they’ll (hopefully!) miss us by. Most of them are relatively small asteroids several dozen meters in width, passing us at a few tens of lunar distances (avg. distance to the Moon is about 370,000 km/235,000 miles or so.) Every now and then, though, something passes us by closely, coming within a handful of lunar distances — or even closer than the Moon itself. These events spark my interest as they remind us that there’s a lot of bits of solar system out there, and sometimes (while we’re busy doing other things) the bigger pieces get unnervingly close.

Yesterday JPL’s NEO specialists Don Yeomans and Paul Chodas posted an article about some “surprising discoveries” of three recently-found asteroids — all of which are of considerable size (two ~19 km/12 miles wide and one 2 km) and the third of which passes by closely enough to be considered “potentially hazardous” (as opposed to merely “near Earth”). Curious? Read on…



Two surprisingly large Near-Earth Asteroids have been discovered in just the last week or so, as well as a third moderately large asteroid which surprisingly has also gone undetected until now, even though it can pass close enough to the Earth to be classified as “potentially hazardous”. Not since 1983 has any near-Earth asteroid been found as large as the approximately 20-kilometer (12-mile) size of the two new large ones. In fact, there are only three other known near-Earth asteroids that are of comparable size or larger than the two new large ones.

It is important to note that none of these three new large near-Earth asteroids can come close enough to the Earth to represent a near-term threat to our planet.

The first of the new large near-Earth asteroid discoveries is named 2013 UQ4, and it is perhaps the most unusual. This approximately 19-kilometer (12-mile) wide object was spotted by the Catalina Sky Survey on Oct. 23 when the asteroid was 435 million kilometers (270 million miles) away from Earth. Not only is this object unusually large, it follows a very unusual highly inclined, retrograde orbit about the Sun, which means it travels around the Sun in the opposite direction of all the planets and the vast majority of asteroids.

The only objects usually found in retrograde orbits are comets, which suggests that 2013 UQ4 may be the remains of an old comet that no longer possesses the near-surface ices required for it to become active while near the Sun. Comets that have exhausted most, or all, of their volatile ices do not spew dust during sweeps through the inner-solar system like their less-seasoned, more hyperactive space kin. Without the telltale comet tails or atmospheres, dead comets look like, and in fact for all practical purposes are, asteroids.

As reported on Circular No. 9262 of the International Astronomical Union, MIT’s Richard Binzel, David Polishook and Rachel Bowens-Rubin observed this object on October 31 with NASA’s 3-meter Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii and determined this object belongs to the so-called X-type spectral class and exhibits no obvious comet-like activity. This implies about a 4 percent reflectivity, from which they estimate a diameter of approximately 19 kilometers (12 miles).

The second very large near-Earth object, named 2013 US10, was discovered on October 31 by the Catalina Sky Survey. (Update: asteroid 2013 US10 has been reclassified as Comet C/2013 US10 (Catalina).) While the reflectivity of this object has not yet been determined, and hence its diameter is still uncertain, it is also likely to be about 20 kilometers (12 miles) in size. Only three near-Earth asteroids (1036 Ganymed, 433 Eros and 3552 Don Quixote) are of comparable size or larger.

Read more about the asteroid-turned-comet 3552 Don Quixote here.

Why has it taken so long to discover these large near-Earth asteroids? The delay in discovering 2013 UQ4 is more easily understood because it has a very long orbital period that has kept it out of the Earth’s neighborhood for centuries. But the delayed discovery of 2013 US10 is a bit harder to explain, since current population models suggest that almost all near-Earth asteroids of this size and orbit should have already been found. A contributing factor may be that this object’s orbit does not allow it to get closer than 80 million kilometers (50 million miles) of the Earth’s orbit, so the asteroid seldom gets close enough to the Earth to become easily detectable. However, NASA-supported telescopic surveys are now covering more sky and looking “deeper” than they ever have before, and in fact, 2013 US10 was first detected where it spends much of its time, well beyond the orbit of Jupiter.

The third of the recent discoveries is the approximately two-kilometer near-Earth asteroid 2013 UP8, found on October 25 by the Pan-STARRS group in Hawaii. This asteroid can approach quite close to the Earth’s orbit, within 5.5 million kilometers (3.4 million miles), which makes it a “potentially hazardous asteroid” (PHA). 2013 UP8 is in the top 5th percentile of the largest PHAs, most of which were found much earlier during NASA’s asteroid survey program. Like the other new discoveries, this asteroid has gone undetected for a long time because it has not approached the Earth closely for decades. But the increasingly capable NASA-supported asteroid surveys finally found this object while it was still at a large distance from the Earth, well beyond the orbit of Mars.

Source: article by Don Yeomans and Paul Chodas of the NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Program Office.

(If this doesn’t highlight the need for a next-generation asteroid-hunting mission like B612Foundation’s Sentinel spacecraft, I don’t know what does!)

*NOTE: I’ve received word after posting this that one of these NEOs has been reclassified as a comet. Stay tuned!