A 320-meter asteroid will pass by Earth on Halloween, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has announced. The asteroid, called 2015 TB145, doesn’t represent a threat to the planet. The news wouldn’t be terribly scary save for one important detail: NASA just discovered the asteroid 10 days ago.
Astronomers say the asteroid will pass at a distance of 1.3 lunar distances from Earth (about 300,000 miles away). It’s expected to be the closest flyby by a large object until at least August 2027, assuming there aren’t others we have missed (which is a big assumption). In February 2013, a smaller, Olympic pool-sized asteroid passed within 17,200 miles of Earth—closer than weather and communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
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The difference then was we had a yearlong lead time before that asteroid crossed paths with Earth. The newly discovered asteroid is on the outer edge of being considered “potentially hazardous.”
NASA’s near Earth object observatories face constant budget constraints, and a private effort to eventually launch a satellite dedicated to detecting potentially hazardous objects appears to be struggling financially. NASA is currently considering whether it should invest in a mission that would detect more of these objects.
According to observations made by NASA’s Goldstone Radar, 2015 TB145, discovered October 10, has an “extremely eccentric” orbit and will be traveling at about 35 km/s when it passes by Earth, a speed that is “unusually high.”
It’ll be the closest flyby by an object this large since 2006. Both of those asteroids were discovered years before their encounters with Earth.
Besides the fact that we will not, in fact, be hit by this asteroid, there’s one other silver lining. NASA says that because the object is so large and is coming so close, they may be able to take some important measurements of it. “The flyby presents a truly outstanding scientific opportunity to study the physical properties of this object,” NASA wrote.
