Huge asteroid's flyby: 4179 Toutatis NASA video shows giant asteroid hurdling through space

Asteroid DA 14 will make one of the closest passes to Earth ever observed by modern science, NASA says.
Photographer: P.Carril / ESA
Copyright 2012 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Regular Photo Size

Posted: 12/17/2012

By: Jason Davis, WPTV

A new video shows the giant asteroid 4179 Toutatis hurdling through space on its flyby of Earth earlier this week.

The asteroid Toutatis video combines 64 radar images taken Wednesday and Thursday by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., according to the Space.com staff .

On those days, Toutatis was about 4.3 million miles away from earth (about 18 times farther away than the moon.)

The video reveals how Toutatis moves, wobbling like a badly thrown football.

Scientists say Toutatis never posed a threat to earth on its recent flyby and there is no chance of it hitting our planet within the next four centuries or so. Beyond that, the asteroid's orbit is impossible to accurately predict.

If it ever does collide with earth it would cause catastrophic damage, potentially killing off humanity and numerous other species.

Asteroid Toutatis makes one trip around the sun every four years. The next time it comes "close" to earth will be in November 2069, when it comes within 1.8 million miles (7.7 times the distance from Earth to the moon.)