Celestial Discovery: NASA Captures Images of a “Snowman” Asteroid

On September 17, 2024, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA announced that the American space agency's Planetary Radar had captured an asteroid with a surprising shape. Indeed, according to the institution's press release, it was shaped like a peanut. For the general public, it is more like a snowman.

2024 WE “grazed” the Earth in mid-September

2024 ON is the official name of this cosmic snowman. On September 17, 2024, it approached Earth at a distance of 1 million kilometers and was traveling at a speed of 31,933 km/h according to JPL.

Estimated to be 350 meters long, JPL has classified it as potentially hazardous. However, “it does not pose a danger to the Earth in the near future. Measurements made using Goldstone [ndr, le radar planétaire] allowed scientists to significantly reduce uncertainties regarding the asteroid's distance from Earth and its future motion for several decades.” read the JPL statement.

In other words, the space snowman is unlikely to cause us any harm.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It's not one, but two asteroids

Finally, currently, 2024 ON is one and the same asteroid. However, this has not always been the case. Indeed, as reported Space Based on the JPL press release, 2024 ON is an asteroid that is actually a merger of two small asteroids. In the words of the specialist media, “they gravitationally bonded and eventually merged into one.”

What supports this theory is the fact that in the photos captured by NASA, the “neck” of the asteroid can be clearly seen, showing where the gravitational fusion between the two asteroids took place.

2024 ON is therefore part of a separate category of asteroids, that of those which have a “binary form of contact” as JPL explains. According to the scientific institution, “14% of near-Earth asteroids larger than 200 meters” are in this case.

Space under high surveillance

66 million years ago, the Earth was not what it was and humanity had no say in the matter. In this sense, no space agency was able to warn the dinosaurs of the arrival of a deadly meteorite that simply caused their disappearance from the surface of the planet.

In this sense, space, as a hostile environment, is constantly scanned for a potential threat. Thus, every night, 28,000 asteroids, their position and orbit, are monitored by NASA. According to scientists that the American space agency, none of these space rocks, which present a “potential danger”, should have an orbit that could encounter the Earth in the next 100 years.

So humanity is safe. For now.

Source: JPL / Space