July 29, 2011 09:17 am EDT

Trojan asteroid caught circling Earth, the Greeks deny involvement

Hide your kids, hide your wife, there's an asteroid circling Earth's orbit and we're all gonna... be just fine? Yeah, no need to stock up those '60s fallout shelters folks, this approximately 1,000 feet wide space rock is sitting pretty and safe in one of our Lagrange points. The so-called Trojan asteroid, known as 2010 TK7, was uncovered 50 million miles away by the infrared eyes of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope, and is the first of its kind to be discovered near our humble planet. Typically, these near-Earth objects (NEOs) hide in the sun's glare, but this satellite's unusual circuit around our world helped WISE and the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope confirm its existence. The finding has our best and brightest giddy with the hope similar NEOs "could make excellent candidates for future robotic or human exploration." Unfortunately, our new planetoid friend's too-high, too-low path doesn't quite cut the space mission mustard. No matter, 2010 TK7 still gets to call "First!"

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Trojan asteroid caught circling Earth, the Greeks deny involvement originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 05:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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