Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (163899) 2003 SD220 close encounter: an image – 28 Oct. 2021
Next 17 Dec 2021, the potentially hazardous asteroid (163899) 2003 SD220 will have a relatively close and obviously safe encounter with our planet. It will come as “close” as 5.4 millions of km, about 14 times the average lunar distance. Here it is our recent image.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (163899) 2003 SD220: 28 Oct. 2021.
The image above comes from a single 300-second exposure, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope.
At the imaging time, asteroid (163899) 2003 SD220 was at about 21 millions of km from the Earth and it was slowly approaching us. It was discovered by the LONEOS survey on 29 Sept. 2003.
This 800 meters large asteroid will reach its minimum distance (about 5.42 millions of km) from us on 17 Dec. 2021, at 17:26 UTC (source: Nasa/JPL). Of course, there are no risks at all for our planet.
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