NASA – Two asteroids will making a near miss with the earth this Halloween. The first is 2009 FD, a particularly dark astroid, which will make its closest approach on October 29. The second, 2015 TB145, will flyby Earth on Halloween. The two asteroids will be visible to the naked eye at their closest approach. The astronomical events have been announced in NASA’s Goldstone Radar Observation Plan.
2009 FD was discovered in February 2009 and will approach Earth as one of the closest asteroids we have ever come in contact with. 2009 FD Will approach within 14,000 miles from Earth – that is nearly 6 times closer than the moon. 2009 FD has been tracked by several instruments since its discovery. It was first estimated to be 130 meters in size by NASA’s near Earth program. A better estimate for its size came from NASA’s NEOWISE, which gave a value of 470 meters in size.
2015 TB145 was discovered just over a week ago by the Pan-STARRS I telescope in Hawaii, and it has an estimated size of 520 meters. The passing of 2015 TB 145 will be the closest approach by something this large until asteroid 2027. Both objects will be tracked and studied by the Goldstone Observatory in California. NASA scientists say they are 95% sure Earth will not experience an astroid impact. Although the asteroids will more than likely not make an impact with the earth, NASA says you can expect earthquake like ground shaking and blaze of fire in the October night sky. Keep your eyes open October 29 and October 30, you are about to see something spectacular!