[meteorite-list] Large Asteroid Will Zoom Safely Past Earth Wednesday (Toutatis)

[Ron Baalke]

Gretchen Cook-Anderson 
Headquarters, Washington                     Sept. 28, 2004 
(Phone: 202/358-0836)

D.C. Agle 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(Phone: 818/393-9011)

RELEASE: 04-319

LARGE ASTEROID WILL ZOOM SAFELY PAST EARTH WEDNESDAY

A mountain-sized asteroid will make its closest approach 
to Earth at 9:35 a.m. EDT tomorrow.

Although asteroid 4179 Toutatis will come no closer than four 
times the distance between the Earth and the moon 
(approximately 961,000), this will be the closest approach of 
any known asteroid of comparable size this century.

"This is the closest Toutatis will come for another 500 
years, and its orbit is very well known," said Dr. Don 
Yeomans of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, 
Calif., manager of NASA's Near Earth Objects Program Office. 
"What this fly-by provides is an opportunity to study one of 
our closest solar system neighbors," he said.

"While we have done radar observations on this particular 
asteroid before, this is the closest it has come since at 
least the twelfth century " said Dr. Steve Ostro, a scientist 
at JPL. "We will use the huge dish in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, 
to refine our knowledge of its physical characteristics and 
its trajectory," he said.

Named after an obscure Celtic and Gallic god, Toutatis, the 
yam-shaped space rock measures 1.92 kilometers (1.2 miles) by 
2.29 kilometers (1.4 miles) by 4.6 kilometers (2.9 miles). 
Toutatis has one of the strangest rotation states observed in 
the solar system. Instead of spinning around a single axis, 
as do the planets and the vast majority of asteroids, it 
"tumbles" somewhat like a football after a botched pass. Its 
rotation is the result of two different types of motion with 
periods of 5.4 and 7.3 Earth days that combine in such a way 
that Toutatis's orientation, with respect to the solar 
system, never repeats.

When the asteroid flies past Earth, it will be traveling at 
approximately 39,600 kilometers per hour (24,550 mph). 
Toutatis has not passed this close to Earth since the twelfth 
century, and it will not be this close again until 2562. 
Toutatis was discovered in 1989.

Arecibo Observatory is operated by Cornell University, 
Ithaca, N.Y., under a cooperative agreement with the National 
Science Foundation, with support from NASA.

To view a computer model of asteroid Toutatis on the 
Internet, visit: 

http://reason.jpl.nasa.gov/~ostro/ToutatisHires.mov

and 

http://reason.jpl.nasa.gov/~ostro/ToutatisHires.avi

For more information about near Earth objects on the 
Internet, visit:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/

For information about NASA on the Internet, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

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