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Potentially Hazardous Asteroid to flyby Earth (+Video)
1566 Icarus is a large asteroid about 1.4 Km in size and is belong to 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 millon 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 Hollywood movie “Meteor”. For the first time scientists seriously studied as how to avert a doomsday impacts from space rocks, as Icarus is large enough to be classified as a killer asteroid!
The next close approach will be June 16, 2015, at 0.05383 AU (8,053,000 km; 5,004,000 mi). http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/
NEO Asteroid Close Approaches June 2015
http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.gr/2015/06/neo-asteroid-close-approaches-june-2015.html
1566 Icarus – MIT ”Project Icarus”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1566_Icarus#Project_Icarus
Image credit: Alamy
