The asteroid is said to look like a dice of the famous board game Dungeons & Dragons. NASA has released images of asteroid named 2017 BQ6 on Friday.
The asteroid is strangely angular and most space rocks are not like that. CNET has reported that the radar images showed the sharp corners, flat regions and small bright spots of what seems like boulders of the asteroid. It is somehow the same as the dice of the infamous game board Dungeons & Dragons.
The Dungeons & Dragons dice-looking asteroid has passed the Earth last February 7 safe and sound. Its distance was recorded to be 1.6 million miles or 2.5 million kilometers far. The asteroid was about 660 feet or 200 meters across and it was rotating as it was traveling. It resembled the famous board game Dungeons & Dragons as the asteroid was rolling while passing the Earth.
"This year has seen some much closer asteroid flybys, but 2017 BQ6 may be the only one of the bunch that looks like it could take down an owlbear in combat," said NASA asteroid researcher Lance Benner, who noted the asteroid's resemblance to the dice used while playing Dungeons & Dragons.
According to Space, the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California was the one who took the photo of the asteroid. The radar images of it looking like rolling Dungeons & Dragons dice were then revealed. It was not the first time that a weird and unusual looking asteroid was seen at space. In 2015 a skull-like asteroid was spotted too.
The radar is used to spot asteroids that come close to Earth. It has seen hundreds and hundreds of remnants and small asteroids passing the Earth. The radar is a tool that is used by NASA scientists to check the asteroids' sizes, shapes, rotation, surface features, and roughness, and for more precise determination of their orbital path.
It is NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California that manages and operates NASA's Deep Space Network. It includes the Goldstone Solar System Radar. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory also hosts the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program within the agency's Science Mission Directorate.
