The closest approach of the asteroid, named 2011 AG5, to Earth took place on February 3, when it approached our planet from a distance of about 1.7 million km. Its length is about half a kilometer, its width is about 150 m.
That’s too tall for the team that discovered and measured the asteroid. “Of the 1,040 near-Earth objects observed by planetary radars to date, this is one of the longest we’ve seen,” said Lance Benner, chief scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The team also found that 2011 AG5’s rotation speed was quite slow, and it took nine hours for the object to spin. The asteroid’s next transit of Earth will only occur in 2040 as it continues to orbit around the Sun.
Source: Ferra
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