QW20007

Earth-approaching Space Rock found by Accident
BBC News, July 10, 2000

A new member of the family of asteroids that can pass close to the Earth has been discovered. The space rock was found by accident on 2 July by astronomer Leonard Amburgey of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He typed in the wrong celestial co-ordinates into his computer-controlled telescope and stumbled across the 3-km (1.8 miles) sized object. The asteroid has been given the temporary designation 2000 NM by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It poses no threat to Earth. Astronomers say this is the brightest near-Earth asteroid to be discovered in the past year. However, they are concerned that it was found by accident and was missed by the half dozen professional minor-planet surveys currently in operation. At the moment, it is about 22 million km (13 million miles) from Earth. It crosses inside the Earth's orbit at the end of July, on its way to its closest approach to the Sun in late August. Since the asteroid's discovery, a variety of telescopes from around the world have been collecting data on it. Astronomers hope that by looking for variations in its brightness they may get some idea of how fast the space rock is spinning. An accurate estimation of its orbit would also help them determine if it is likely to pass close to the Earth in the future. A collision, however, has been ruled out.

Asteroid gives Earth a Cosmic 'Close Shave'
By Mark Henderson, The Times Newspapers Ltd., Sept. 5, 2000

The Earth has had a cosmic near miss with an asteroid one third of a mile wide, leading to new calls for an international task force to devise ways of preventing a devastating impact. The 2000 QW7 asteroid, which originated in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, passed within 2.4 million miles of the Earth on Friday morning, astronomers said yesterday. It was detected at Cornell University's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, six days before it hurtled past the Earth. The asteroid was only twelve times further away than the moon when it reached the nearest point to earth on its orbit - a close shave in cosmic terms. Lembit Opik, the Liberal Democrat MP who has campaigned for international co-operation to counter the dangers of asteroids, said that the Earth had had a very narrow escape. "It is as if someone had thrown a marble at you across a tennis court and missed your head by the width of your hand," he said. "It is all very well saying it didn't hit us, but if it had been 2.4 million miles this way, which is peanuts, we wouldn't be here talking about it today."

The near miss underlined the need for international co-operation to share information on the extent of asteroid threats and to work out means by which dangerous asteroids could be destroyed or diverted, he said. Astronomers said that the discovery of 2000 QW7 was highly significant as it offered an exceptional opportunity to study a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) at close quarters. "This is a very importat object," said Eleanor Helin, principal investigator at Nasa's Near Earth Asteroid Tracking system (Neat), on Maui, Hawaii. "It's so bright that astronomers can track it now and through to the end of the year. It's a bit of a mystery why we haven't seen this one before." Asteroids are classified as PHAs if they are larger than a couple of hundred metres across, and have orbits within 4.65 million miles of the Earth. Gravitational nudges by the Earth, Mars or Jupiter could alter their orbits, and set them on a collision course with our planet.