Large Asteroid Zipping Past Earth, Dragging Its Own Moon Along
An asteroid is whizzing past Earth on Friday — and it’s traveling with its own moon in tow.
1998 QE2, as NASA has named it, will not come anywhere near enough to collide with our world.
The closest it will come is about 3.6 million miles away — that’s over 15 times the distance to our moon. It will reach that point just before 5 p.m. ET.
But it’s giving astronomers the “best look at this asteroid ever,” NASA said.
Scientists have been rubbing their hands for a decade and a half for this opportunity since they discovered the asteroid on August 19, 1998, the year for which it is named. The letter “Q” stands for the month of August.
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