[amsat-bb] Re: Close encounters of the Asteroidal Kind

[Vince Fiscus, KB7ADL]

At 01:06 AM 2/7/2013 -0500, k3io at verizon.net wrote:
>Next week (Feb 15) the earth will be visited by asteroid 2012 DA14 passing 
>inside the gestationary satellite orbits. To quote from 
>http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/2012DA14/2012DA14_planning.html,
>>2012 DA14 was discovered by the La Sagra Sky Survey in Spain on February 
>>23, 2012.
>>This object will make an extremely close approach to within 0.00023 AU of 
>>Earth at
>>19:25 UT (11:25 AM PST) on February 15, 2013.  That is only 0.09 lunar 
>>distances or 5.4 Earth
>>radii from the center of the Earth.  The close approach will be about 
>>28000 km above Earth's
>>surface.  That's inside the distance to geosynchronous satellites but 
>>thousands of kilometers
>>above the elevation for low-Earth-orbit spacecraft such as the 
>>International Space Station.
>>At the time of closest approach, the asteroid will move about 0.8 degrees 
>>per minute.
>There is considerable interest in the astronomy community over plans to do 
>radar tracking of the asteroid. The Goldstone 70M dish will be running MAX 
>QRO with 435 kW.
>
>73 de Tom, K3IO


I know some might think this is off topic, but I enjoy seeing reports
like these on the BB.

Thanks Tom.

KB7ADL