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NBC's George Lewis reports on asteroid 2005 YU55's flyby.

Passing asteroid puts on a show

Watch a six-frame video showing the spin of asteroid 2005 YU55 on Nov. 7 as it closed in for an encounter with Earth. The radar imagery was produced by NASA's Goldstone radio telescope.

By Alan Boyle

Astronomers watched the asteroid 2005 YU55 spin as it zoomed harmlessly past Earth, and everybody else was looking over their shoulders. You can expect to see a huge pile of pictures now that the coal-dark space rock has passed by.

Even before the closest pass, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory provided a six-frame "movie" based on radar data acquired by the Goldstone radio telescope on Monday. This sequence was captured from a distance of 860,000 miles (1.38 million kilometers).

The closest approach to Earth came at 6:28 p.m. ET Tuesday, when the quarter-mile-wide (400-meter-wide) asteroid slipped just barely within the orbit of the moon at a distance of 198,000 miles (319,000 kilometers). YU55 is due to come closest to the moon at 2:14 a.m. ET Wednesday, NASA said.

Neither the moon nor Earth was at risk during this flyby, but the information gathered this time around could help astronomers know what they're dealing with during potentially riskier encounters.

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