Recently, the asteroid 2024 MK, which passed by our planet at the end of June, has undergone significant changes in its orbit. New NASA images confirm that the close approach to Earth has significantly affected the trajectory of this space object.
A huge rock, larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza, raced between the Earth and the Moon at a speed of over 34,000 km/h. This rare approach allowed astronomers to photograph this space object for the first time. The images showed that the gravitational field of our planet slightly deviated the asteroid from its previous course, forever changing its journey around the Sun.
Asteroid 2024 MK is approximately 150 meters in diameter, making it large enough to wipe out a metropolis. This «potentially hazardous» irregularly elongated object was first spotted on June 16 by the NASA-funded ATLAS system in South Africa.
On June 29, just 13 days after its detection, 2024 MK reached its closest point to Earth, flying at a distance of nearly 295,000 kilometers — about three-quarters of the distance between Earth and the Moon
Scientists at NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California observed the flyby with the Goldstone Solar System Radar. By bouncing radio waves off the «space rock» during its passage, the team created grainy «bistatic»
But fortunately, «the upcoming movement of the 2024 MC shows that it [still] does not pose a threat to our planet in the foreseeable future», — NASA representatives wrote in their statement.
Two days before the flyby, on June 27, the same telescope also captured images of a much larger asteroid 2011 UL21when it flew at a distance of about 6.6 million kilometers from our planet. The images revealed that this «space rock» has satellite hiding in its orbit.
Source: Livescience