What is flying past Earth? Don't know but it’s called 2010 AL30

William Atkins
Tuesday, 12 January 2010 19:58

Science - Space

Astronomers have shown keen interest in an object that will fly past Earth on Wednesday, January 13, 2010. What has peaked their interest are the facts that it has an orbit of exactly one year and astronomers are not really sure what it is.


Is it a natural asteroid or an artificially made object, such as a spent booster rocket? Astronomers aren't sure.

However, since it comes so close to Earth, the unknown object is classified as a near-Earth Object (NEO).

A NEO is any object in the Solar System whose orbit brings it close to Earth—less than 1.3 astronomical unit (or, the average distance between the Earth and the Sun during Earth’s orbit about the Sun, which is about 150 million kilometers [93 million miles]).

Several thousand asteroids (near-Earth asteroids [NEAs], comets, meteoroids, and spacecraft that orbit the Sun are included within NEOs.

This NEO, called 2010 AL30, will pass by the Earth at 1248 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), 7:48 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on its closest approach to Earth. Find out your local time at: Time Zone Converter.com.

At that time it will be at a distance of about 130 million kilometers (80 million miles), or about one-third (0.34) the distance between the Moon and the Earth.

And, it will be moving at a speed of about 9.5 kilometers per second, which relates to a movement of about 10 arcseconds per second across the sky. [Statistics provided by Associazione Friulana di Astronomia e Meteorologia (AFAM) Remanzacco Observatory: “NEO 2010 AL30 Close Approach”]

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