Huge Asteroid Approaches Earth at End of Month, No "Melancholia" Ending

A huge asteroid will fly by Earth at the end of this month.

On May 31st asteroid 1998 QE2, which is about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) long, poses no threat to Earth. The space rock will come within 3.6 million miles (5.8 million km) of our planet - about 15 times the distance separating Earth and the moon, researchers say according to MSNBC.

Don't worry; this asteroid will not have a "Melancholia" ending. Asteroid 1998 QE2 poses no threat to Earth. However, this asteroid will be a very dramatic moment for many as it will be the closest asteroid to approach Earth for the next two centuries.

"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," Lance Benner, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., principal investigator for Goldstone radar observations, said in a statement according to MSNBC.

The astronomers plan to study the asteroid that was discovered back in 1988 from May 30th to June 9th with the help of Goldstone and Arecibo dishes.
Researchers say that even from about 4 million miles away, Goldstone images may be able to resolve features on 1998 QE2 as small as 12 feet across. They will study the asteroid's distance and velocity to better understand its orbit.

"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 asteroids is a fundamental form of exploring a whole class of solar system objects."