Close Near Earth Object 10/12/07 (Duck and Cover)

I cannot seem to find any information on this object anywhere else on the net.. spaceguard has no listing, nor does any other search turn up any info on it (besides a political race in Texas!)

The kicker is that its reported to be within 0.4 lunar distances... which is still a large number, but BY FAR the closest shown on NASA's site.

Anyway, the object is designated as 2007 TX22 - its relatively small in size at 5.5 m - 12 m (or so they say!) and you can look it up on the NASA NEO close approaches site here : neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

And specific orbital data here: ssd.jpl.nasa.gov... TX22;orb=1

What strikes me as odd is that this is the only place I can find info on it... you would think there would be study reports or even discovery announcements over the web, and at least shared data with the Europian NEO community.

Or am i paranoid? *lol*

I had no idea thanks for the links

did you notice that there are two near earth objects for october 12, the one you mentioned a 0.4 ld and another at 53.0 ld

Isn't that rather small though? I mean yes, 36 ft or so is large, but, I assume it would break up in the atmosphere a bit and dwindle to nothing unless it was adamantium

It may be interesting if some could get some pictures ... or if an observatory got off some shots ... though again, just a rock I suppose.

I wonder if it will hit any satellites ... or do those have Star Trek like shields on them


Good find

I wonder if it will hit any satellites ... or do those have Star Trek like shields on them ?

0.4LD is approximately 150,000 kms. That's well outside the orbits of Earth satellites, even the geostationary ones.

Well the ave Earth to moon distance is 385,000 km so sounds like it is about 1/2 way to the moon..Everybody worries about NEO and impacting earth. But striking the moon might also significantly affect earth