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When the near-earth 2017 YE5 object was recently rocked by Earth, scientists made an incredible discovery: not only 2017 YE5 is actually two asteroids in orbit, not a single asteroid, but the part really special is that these two asteroids the same size, making 2017 YE5 the fourth ever observed a binary asteroid of equal mass, according to a July 11 NASA press release. This incredibly rare space was observable from June 21st to June 26th, and yes, the scientists who saw it are very excited.
To put things in perspective, about 15% of the tens of thousands of known asteroids in the solar system are binary asteroids, reported Gizmodo. But the vast majority of these binaries involve a larger object and a smaller object. Equal mass binary asteroids are only a tiny fraction of documented objects, which is why this discovery is so exciting.
According to NASA's press release, 2017 YE5 was discovered in December 2017, but not close enough to Earth. for us to find something more specific until June when he did a flyby about 3.7 million miles from Earth, Gizmodo reported. While the YE5 2017 has made its appearance, the first observatory to have realized that it was NASA's Goldstone solar system radar in California. The scientists there called scientists from the Puerto Rico Observatory Arecibo, who then collaborated with researchers from the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia.
Although it's charming to imagine that all scientists play the most exciting phone game in the world, this team was actually for scientific purposes, reported NASA. When the Arecibo Observatory and Green Bank Observatory worked together, they were able to create a bi-static radar configuration, "in which Arecibo transmits the radar signal and Green Bank receives the return signal," according to the press release of The NASA. Working in tandem with this setup, observatories have confirmed that 2017 YE5 is a binary of equal mass, and have also been able to record frankly astonishing images, which are available on the NASA website.
showed that the two objects of 2017 YE5 "revolve around each other once every 20 to 24 hours," according to NASA's press release. And scientists have seen that 2017 YE5 is rare in another way: it seems to be one of the other 50 binary asteroid systems where there is a striking difference in the radar reflectivity of the two objects , which means the twin asteroids that make up According to the NASA press release, the 2017 YE5 could have radically different densities, "compositions close to their surfaces, or surface differences", but it would be ideal to be able to all Learn about 2017 YE5 now. Unfortunately we will have no more insight into this for more than 170 years, reported Space.com. But until then, we have other binary asteroids to occupy our time, including Didymos, who, unlike 2017 YE5, is a much more common binary asteroid mass. According to Tech Times, his largest body, unofficially called Didymain, is 2,560 feet in diameter, and his smallest body, "Didymoon," is 530 feet in diameter. Didymos is about to be part of a test for NASA's plan for global defense against a potential collision of asteroids, writes the Tech Times in 1965, during the first part of the mission in October 2022 and 2024., va ram Didymoon to provide data on how DART can affect asteroids, according to Tech Times. To be clear, Didymos does not represent a danger for the Earth, but the data collected by this test from the Hera mission, which will reach Didymos in 2026 to observe the effects of DART, can help us defend the Earth against asteroids
We will probably learn tons of new information from DART, just as we did while observing 2017 YE5, but at least one observation is something we already knew: the space is .
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