Asteroid nine times the size of the QE2 to pass Earth
An asteroid nine times larger than the QE2 is due to sail past the Earth later this month.
The asteroid, like the one pictured, will not pass earth again for two centuries Photo: EPA
By Hayley Dixon and agencies 3:49PM BST 17 May 2013
Luckily, the giant space rock will get no closer than 3.6 million miles, or 15 times the distance between the Earth and the moon. But once it has passed it will not make a return trip to the Earth for at least another two centuries.
Coincidentally, scientists have named the asteroid 1998 QE2. The name has nothing to do with the transatlantic liner - it follows a code used for newly-discovered asteroids by the US Minor Planet Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The asteroid is believed to be about 1.7 miles long, or nine times the length of the Queen Elizabeth 2. It was discovered on August 19, 1998, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research programme near Socorro, New Mexico.
Scientists plan to scan it with radar using a 230ft wide dish telescope at the Goldstone Observatory in California's Mojave desert. Even from a distance of nearly four million miles, the researchers expect to resolve features on the asteroid as small as 12ft across.
Chief investigator Dr Lance Benner, from the American space agency Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: "It is tremendously exciting to see detailed images of this asteroid for the first time.
"With radar we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own unique set of characteristics."
In 2016 Nasa will launch a robotic sample return mission to one of the most potentially hazardous known near-Earth objects (NEOs), the asteroid (101955) Bennu.
The asteroid, which measures a third of a mile across, comes within 500,000 kilometres of the Earth every six years.
Scientists have calculated that in 2182 there is a one in 1,800 chance of the object colliding with the Earth.
