An asteroid as large as nine cruise ships will sail past Earth on Friday at about 15 times the distance between here and the moon, which is about 3.6 million miles, according to TGDaily.
While the asteroid does not pose much of a threat, it will be an interesting study for stargazing scientists.
"Asteroid 1998 QE2 will be an outstanding radar imaging target at Goldstone and Arecibo and we expect to obtain a series of high-resolution images that could reveal a wealth of surface features," said radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the Goldstone radar observations from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The asteroid is believed to be about 1.7 miles long and is estimated to pass closest to earth on Friday at 4:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
"Whenever an asteroid approaches this closely, it provides an important scientific opportunity to study it in detail to understand its size, shape, rotation, surface features, and what they can tell us about its origin." Benner said. "We will also use new radar measurements of the asteroid's distance and velocity to improve our calculation of its orbit and compute its motion farther into the future than we could otherwise."
Asteroids can come in any shape or size, they have been known to look like dog bones, diamonds, and a myriad of other strange shapes. Scientists are looking forward to seeing what Asteroid 1998 QE2 looks like.
"It is tremendously exciting to see detailed images of this asteroid for the first time," Benner said. "With radar we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own unique set of characteristics. In a real sense, radar imaging of near-Earth objects (NEOs) is a fundamental form of exploring a whole class of solar system objects."
NASA places an extremely high priority on tracking asteroids and protecting Earth from them. They believe they've discovered about 98 percent of near-Earth objects. Their budget for finding these objects increased from $6 million to $20 million in 2012.
In 2016 NASA plans to send a robotic probe to one of the most threatening known NEOs. They also plan to capture and relocate an asteroid for human exploration using sophisticated new technology over the next few years.
