Watch A Near Earth Asteroid Zoom By

By Nancy Atkinson - July 20, 2012 at 4:04 PM UTC | Planetary Science
2002-am31.jpg

Caption: A view of asteroid 2002 AM31 on Friday, July 20 2012, at 08:34 UT by the Faulkes Telescope North. Credit: Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network.

An asteroid will pass by Earth on July 22, and thanks to the Slooh Space Camera you can watch it zoom by. There's absolutely no chance this asteroid, named 2002 AM31, could hit Earth, as it is passing by at 14 times the distance of the Moon. But it should be interesting to watch the action live! As they have done with recent asteroid close passes, Slooh live-stream telescope views of the near-approach of this city-block-sized asteroid at

http://www.slooh.com

, starting at 4:30 p.m. PDT / 7:30 p.m. EDT / 23:30 UTC -- accompanied by real-time discussions by Slooh's Patrick Paolucci and Astronomy magazine columnist Bob Berman.

The asteroid is estimated to be 620 m to 1.4 km (2,000 to 4,500 ft wide) and will pass within 14 times the Moon's distance from our planet.

Due to its size and proximity to Earth, 2002 AM31 qualifies as a near-Earth object as it's more than 500 feet wide and within 4.65 million miles of Earth.

"Near Earth objects are no longer treasures only for the paranoid, or for those who secretly and strangely are rooting for an early apocalypse," said Berman. "The entire astronomical community has reversed its thinking about them over the past few decades. Instead of living on an "island Earth" with little or no connection with other celestial objects, we now feel that collisions with comets or asteroids change the evolution of our biosphere, and maybe even seeded our world with the amino acids that started life long ago. In other words, these are important entities. Not to mention, there's always that exciting little hint of danger."

"One of our missions at Slooh is to provide the public with free, live views on fascinating celestial happenings," says Patrick Paolucci, President at Slooh. "Near-Earth asteroid 153958 (2003 AM31) represents 1 of approximately 9,000 whizzing past Earth at any given moment, and we wanted to highlight this one as it's only 13.7 lunar distances from Earth -- similar to near-Earth asteroid LZ1 which zoomed past us unexpectedly mid-June."

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com