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Potentially hazardous asteroid 1566 Icarus to whiz by Earth today
Tuesday, June 16, 2015 9:03
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1566 Icarus is a large asteroid about 1.4 km in size and belongs to the Apollo group that comes close to Earth. It is named after Icarus of Greek mythology, who flew too close to the sun. It was discovered in 1949 by Walter Baade.
On June 14, 1968, Icarus came as close as 4 million miles and became the first minor planet to be observed using radar.
In the spring of 1967, MIT students put a project code named “Project Icarus” to save Earth in case it might collide with Earth and that project became the subject of the Hollywood movie Meteor.
For the first time, scientists seriously studied how to avert a doomsday impact from asteroids, as Icarus is large enough to be classified as a killer asteroid!
