Massive Asteroid to Fly By Earth at End of May: NASA Expects No Collision, Great Photos

A huge asteroid called 1998 QE2 has no affiliation with the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner, but at the end of this month astronomers will have their best view yet of a space rock nine times the size of the famous cruise ship.

The 1.7 mile-wide (2.7 km) asteroid is expected to sail past Earth on May 31 at a safe distance of 3.6 million miles (5.8 million km), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

For scientists observing the flyby with radar telescopes, checking out asteroid 1998 QE2 will be "outstanding," according to radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the Goldstone radar observations from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Brenner said the he expects to obtain a series of high-resolution images that could "reveal a wealth of surface features."

Even from 4 million miles away, the radar telescopes will be able to capture images of the asteroid's surface as small as 12 feet (3.75m) across.

"Whenever an asteroid approaches this closely, it provides an important scientific opportunity to study it in detail to understand its size, shape, rotation, surface features, and what they can tell us about its origin," Brenner said in a statement from the JPL.

"We will also use new radar measurements of the asteroid's distance and velocity to improve our calculation of its orbit and compute its motion farther into the future than we could otherwise."

When the asteroid flies by at about 2 p.m. PDT, on May 31 it will be the closest it will come to Earth for the next 200 years.

Asteroids are given their names by the year and an abbreviation for when they were found. This asteroid was first discovered in 1998 and QE2 indicates the half-month in which it was discovered and the sequence within that half-month.

It is not known what 1998 QE2 looks like and it's any one's guess as to what shape the space rock may resemble. The shapes of other asteroids have been described as far-ranging as dog bones, bowling pins, spheroids, diamonds, muffins, and potatoes.

"It is tremendously exciting to see detailed images of this asteroid for the first time," said Benner. "With radar we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own unique set of characteristics. In a real sense, radar imaging of near-Earth asteroids is a fundamental form of exploring a whole class of solar system objects."