NASA astronomers found a space rock bizarre because of its shape. Unlike most asteroids, this one is as big as the Empire State Building and it has a long shape.

Bizarre Long-Shaped Asteroid

NASA found one asteroid uncommon because of its elongated shape. It set the record straight that not all space rocks are ball-like, because it is three times as long as it is wide, according to Mashable.

The scientists estimate the rock to be about 1,600 feet (500 meters) long and about 500 feet (150 meters) wide. NASA JPL shared a collage of six pictures of the asteroid taken by the Goldstone Solar System Radar antenna dish in California.

Lance Benner, principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement that of the 1,040 near-Earth objects observed by planetary radar to date, it was the "most elongated" they had ever seen.

The asteroid is known as 2011 AG5z and it just zipped passed our planet at a safe distance of 1.1 million miles away on Feb. 3, according to NASA The said flyby reportedly gave the astronomers their first crack at its size, rotation, surface, and silhouette in details over a decade since it was discovered.

2011 AG5z was discovered 12 years ago.

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More About Asteroid AG5z

After making a close approach to Earth, astronomers noticed that the bizarre asteroid has a dark charcoal color, appears to be scooped on one side and slowly spins every nine hours. Due to its slow movement, it takes about twice as long to orbit the sun as Earth and it will not have another near flyby with the planet until 2040 when it could come within 670,000 miles.

It is still far enough for a collision because its distance is about three times farther than the moon is to Earth. According to Johnson, planetary defense officer for NASA last year, an asteroid impact is extremely rare. It probably happens once in a century when there is an asteroid that we want to deflect.

Chelyabinsk, was the largest asteroid to strike Earth in over a century ago. ESA Operations shared a photo taken after sunrise on a sunny winter's day when the 20-meter and 13,000-tonne asteroid struck the atmosphere over the Ural Mountains in Russia at a speed of 18 kilometers per second on Feb. 15, 2023.

The 170-foot wide asteroid destroyed a small city, according to NASA when it exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia. It caused a disaster in six cities and injured 1,600 people.

In a previous report from Science Times, the explosion reportedly had 20 to 30 times the explosion of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The shock wave resulted in broken windows and knocked down some parts of the buildings in the affected cities.

Nations are preparing for potential strikes from near-Earth objects by developing warning systems and defense strategies. NASA launched a spacecraft in November 2022 known as the DAT Mission, which is designed to intentionally crash into a harmless asteroid in deep space to shift their trajectory, and thwart potentially hazardous space rocks.

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