NASA’s Deep Space Network planetary radar collected the first detailed images of the stadium-sized asteroid 2008 OS7.
On February 2, this large asteroid passed close to Earth at a distance of approximately 2.9 million kilometers, or 7 and a half times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
There was no risk that the asteroid, called 2008 OS7, would impact our planet.
However, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory used a powerful radio antenna to better determine the size, rotation, shape, and surface details of this NEO.
Until this approach, asteroid 2008 OS7 had been too far from Earth for planetary radar systems to image it.
The asteroid was discovered on July 30, 2008, during routine OCT search operations by the Catalina Sky Survey.
Following the discovery, observations of the amount of light reflected from the asteroid’s surface revealed that it was approximately 200 to 500 meters wide and rotates comparatively slowly, completing one rotation every 29 and a half hours.
The 2008 OS7 rotation period was determined by Petr Pravec of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Ondrejov, Czech Republic.
He looked at the asteroid’s light curve (or how the object’s brightness changes over time).
As the asteroid rotates, variations in its shape change the brightness of the reflected light that astronomers see, and those changes are recorded to understand the asteroid’s rotation period.
Images of the stadium-sized asteroid
During the Feb. 2 close approach, JPL’s radar group used the powerful 70-meter Goldstone Solar System Radar dish at the Deep Space Network facility near Barstow, California, to image the asteroid.
Scientists discovered that its surface has a mixture of rounded and more angular regions with a small concavity.
They also discovered that the asteroid is smaller than previously estimated (about 150 to 200 meters wide) and confirmed its unusually slow rotation.
The Goldstone radar observations also provided key measurements of the asteroid’s distance from Earth as it passed.
Those measurements can help scientists at NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) refine the trajectory calculations asteroid’s orbit around the Sun.
Asteroid 2008 OS7 orbits the Sun once every 2.6 years, traveling from within the orbit of Venus and passing the orbit of Mars at its farthest point.
CNEOS, managed by JPL, calculates each known NEO orbit to provide assessments of potential impact hazards.
Due to the proximity of its orbit to Earth and its size, 2008 OS7 is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, but the February 2 approach is the closest it will get to our planet in at least 200 years.
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