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Most of the space rocks that pass near the Earth are lonely travelers who make their way around the Sun and glide across our planet. The 1999 KW4 asteroid, which will make a distant pass to Earth on May 25, is quite different. The large primary body of the object is thought to be about one mile wide and large enough to be orbited by a smaller "asteroid moon".
The smallest "moon" of the largest rock is still quite considerable, measuring more than a quarter of a mile in diameter. If the double asteroid threatened the Earth, we would have serious problems, but fortunately that is not the case.
1999 KW4 should not be a problem for us on Earth in the near future, and when it passes later this week, it will do it at a relatively comfortable distance of more than 3.2 million miles. For context, it's more than 13 times the distance between the Earth and our own Moon.
So it will not be so close, but that does not mean it's not an interesting opportunity for astronomers who want to know more about it and the other asteroids in our system. Past observations of the rock have revealed that it has a strange diamond shape similar to that of other well-known asteroids such as Ryugu.
How these space rocks take shape and the processes that can affect their evolution over time remain largely unknown. For 1999, KW4 in particular, the origins of the smallest "moon" orbiting the wider body are also of interest to researchers. Is it a piece of the biggest rock that broke loose long ago, or maybe even an asteroid thug that was driven by the gravitational pull of the larger body?
Answering these questions would require a lot of work, but a relatively close visit to the asteroid later this week could offer astronomers the opportunity to propose new theories.
Source of Image: Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico / NASA / NSF / S
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