This flyby will provide a unique opportunity for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close.
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This asteroid, like the one that will fly by on February 15, is considered a near-Earth object.
"No Earth impact is possible, " according to Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
To date, balloon-borne activities have centered around heliophysics and astrophysics that have not required precision-pointing, says Near-Earth Object (NEO) program officer Rob Landis at NASA headquarters.
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"The meteor was probably about the size of an SUV, " said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif.
"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years, " said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, in a statement.
It's hard to predict exactly how bright Pan-STARRS will be, but you should be able to see it without binoculars or telescopes, said Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program.
"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average, " Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said last week.
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"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average, " said Paul Chodas, of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
When he detected the object, Bill Yeung contacted the Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, the clearing house for such discoveries, which gave it the designation J002E3 and posted it on their Near-Earth Object Confirmation webpage.
The mission would further clarify the threat that this particular object poses, and better predict the orbits of other near-Earth asteroids, Beshore said.
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