Christmas 'Hippo' Asteroid Buzzing Earth

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Christmas 'Hippo' Asteroid Is Buzzing Earth,
Its Closest Flyby in 400 Years

By Tariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor | December 22, 2018

<<If only a hippopotamus will do this Christmas, Santa has the space rock for you. A small asteroid will fly safely by Earth Saturday (Dec. 22) and according to the folks at NASA, it looks just like the mighty hippo in new radar images. The asteroid, called 2003 SD220, is also making its closest approach to Earth in more than 400 years and won't be any closer until 2070, NASA officials said. It last flew by Earth on Christmas Eve of 2015.

"Do you want a hippopotamus for Christmas?" officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote on Twitter Friday (Dec. 21). "You're in luck. Hippo-shaped #asteroid 2003 SD220 will fly safely past Earth on Saturday, Dec. 22, at a distance of ~1.8 million miles (~2.9 million km).">>

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Holiday Asteroid Imaged with NASA Radar
NASA | JPL-Caltech | NRAO | Arecibo | Dec 21

These three radar images of near-Earth asteroid 2003 SD220 were obtained on Dec. 15-17, by coordinating observations with NASA's 230-foot (70-meter) antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California and the National Science Foundation's (NSF) 330-foot (100-meter) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSSR/NSF/GBO

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