A 300,000-mile ‘near miss’: Skull asteroid to skim past Earth on Halloween

A large asteroid which bears an eerie resemblance to a human skull is expected to skim past Earth today. Known as 2015 TB145 and discovered just three weeks ago, it is estimated to be about 1,300ft in diameter and will shoot past the planet at 22 miles per second at about 1700 GMT on Hallowe'en. The large rock, also dubbed the Great Pumpkin by Nasa, will come within about 300,000 miles of Earth, farther away than the moon but relatively close by cosmic measures.

It’s not going to hit us and we will know its orbit really well so we can project it into the future and see whether or not it comes near the earth again and we’ve done that and it’s not going to pose any hazard to the earth in certainly the next century.

Paul Chodas, Nasa

Astronomers hope to capture radar images and other measurements of the asteroid to find out more about its shape, dimensions, surface features and other characteristics. Aside from pure scientific value, the encounter may help scientists develop better tracking techniques and counter-measures for asteroids that may be on a collision course with Earth. Nasa’s Paul Chodas said: “If we ever had to deflect an asteroid we would need to know a lot about it. And we don’t know much about asteroids in general, their structure, how strong they are, are they fill of holes, is it like swiss cheese or are they more solid?”

The data may indicate that the object might be a dead comet, but in the Arecibo images it appears to have donned a skull costume for its Halloween flyby.

Nasa scientist Kelly Fast

Science asteroid