An asteroid large enough to wreak continent-wide devastation will pass by the Earth on Halloween. Astronomers could not be happier about it.
Nicknamed "The Great Pumpkin" by NASA, the asteroid formally known as 2015 TB145 will provide scientists with needed knowledge of asteroids — valuable both for the sake of science, as well as knowing how to deflect one if it were ever headed straight for Earth.
"We need to know more about asteroids," said Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We don't know much about their structure, how strong they are, their minerology. If we were ever to have to deflect an asteroid, we would want to know these things."
At its closest point it will be about 300,000 miles from Earth — slightly further out than the moon — which "astronomically is a pretty close passage,"
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