Largest Asteroid Ever Tracked To Pass By Earth Just 11 Days After Solar Eclipse

Only 11 days after today's total solar eclipse the world will be treated to another astronomical display. The largest tracked asteroid will fly by Earth, providing amateur and professional astronomers another reason to look to the sky. The weeks surrounding the American solar eclipse and fly by of asteroid Florence have offered publicity, education, and support for our space agencies, astrophysics, and astronomy.
The asteroid Florence will safely pass by Earth on September 1st, 2017 at a distance of approximately 4.4 million miles from Earth. To put this in perspective, the 2.7-mile wide asteroid will pass by at 18 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
Florence is the largest asteroid tracked by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory meaning this is a great opportunity for NASA to monitor and study the asteroid in greater detail than before.

“While many known asteroids have passed by closer to Earth than Florence will on September 1, all of those were estimated to be smaller...Florence is the largest asteroid to pass by our planet this close since the NASA program to detect and track near-Earth asteroids began.” - Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

NASA intends to use ground-based radar to image the asteroid as it flys by Earth, specifically the Goldstone Solar System Radar in California and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico operated by the National Science Foundation.
By using radar the agencies will be able to detect small surface details on the asteroid with a resolution of about 30 feet. This will allow for identification of the asteroid's general morphology, size, surface features, rotation, shape, etc.
A similar technique was used to collect data on the 2014 JO25 asteroid approach. This was a close asteroid approach, which got within 4 lunar distances from Earth on September 2004. This allowed for excellent resolution in studying the asteroids physical characteristics.

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