Two rocks fused into one to form peanut-like asteroid that flew past Earth

An asteroid that flew past Earth recently was not one but two pieces of rocks melded with one another. It resembled a snowman, with a head and a body, and was pretty big. It was classified as a potentially hazardous object.

The asteroid, named 2024 ON, flew past Earth at a speed of 19,842 mph (31,933 kph) on September 17. It was different from the other asteroids that regularly approach Earth. At 1150 feet (350 metres) in length, about the size of a skyscraper, it could have caused destruction if it had hitEarth.

However, it zoomed past safely at a distance of 620,000 miles (1 million kilometres), which is over 2.5 times the average distance between the moon and Earth.

The asteroid looked like a peanut, with a visible dip in the middle.Scientists say that years ago, the two asteroids came extremely close to each other. So much so that they became gravitationally bound. Ultimately, they became one.

The distinction between the two was made by the distinct neck present, with one lobe roughly 50 per cent bigger than the other.

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The asteroid also likely has large boulders on its surface. "Bright radar spots on the asteroid's surface likely indicate large boulders," the statement says.

"This asteroid is classified as potentially hazardous, but it does not pose a hazard to Earth for the foreseeable future," NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.

Scientists used the Goldstone Solar System Radar in California to measure the asteroid and experts have now reduced "the uncertainties in the asteroid's distance from Earth and in its future motion for many decades."

Such two-lobed asteroids are called "contact binaries", and astronomers say that at least 14 per cent of all near-Earth asteroids that are bigger than 660 feet belong to this group.

Selam, the little moonlet with asteroid Dinkinesh, is one of the most famous contact binary asteroids. It sits between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and was discovered by the Lucy spacecraft earlier this year. It is the first contact-binary satellite found to be orbiting an asteroid.