Could Asteroid 2005 YU55 Destroy The Moon?

(Before It's News)

This still from a NASA animation by Jon Giorgini of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows the trajectory of asteroid 2005 YU55 as it passes between Earth and the moon on Nov. 8, 2011. CREDIT: JPL View full size image

An asteroid four football fields long will pass near Earth on Nov. 8. A space rock this big hasn't come this close in 35 years: It will fly by at a distance of just 201,700 miles (325,000 kilometers), which is actually inside the orbit of the moon. NASA has assured the world that the asteroid, officially named 2005 YU55, poses no threat to our planet. But what about our planet's loyal sidekick? Is the moon in danger?

Don Yeomans, director of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said 2005 YU55 will not hit the moon. While the space rock whizzes past the planet at a clip of 30,000 miles per hour (13 km/s), the moon will be about a fourth of its way to the opposite side of Earth. Like two ships passing in the night, they'll miss each other by more than 150,000 miles (240,000 km).

But, out of curiosity, what if 2005 YU55 were on a collision course with the moon? Is it big enough to do major damage?"It would be a significant event on the moon, certainly," Yeomans told Life's Little Mysteries. "It wouldn't move the moon around at all, but it would cause a significant impact crater … at least 4 kilometers [2.5 miles] wide. That's significant, but still a pretty small crater in terms of the hierarchy of lunar craters."

For comparison, the moon's biggest impact crater, the South Pole-Aitken basin, measures 1,600 miles (2,500 km) in diameter.

 

An enhanced image of the moon taken with the NOAO Mosaic CCD camera at Kitt Peak National Observatory, and superimposed on a separate image of the sky.
CREDIT: NOAO/AURA/NSF

View full size image

An asteroid the size of 2005 YU55 impacts Earth about once every 100,000 years, Yeomans said, and because the moon is a much smaller target than Earth, such an event happens on the moon only once every several hundred thousand years. But because our satellite has no atmosphere, no erosion and no tectonic activity, all the impacts it has ever experienced remain imprinted on its surface. [What Would Earth Be Like If the Moon Had Never Formed?]

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