asteroid

These coordinated observations show that the asteroid is almost three times smaller than earlier estimates and rotates far more rapidly.

Sixty-six million years ago, give or take a few centuries, an asteroid about the size of Manhattan Island slammed into Earth near what we now call the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico.

It also indicates that several kinds of tyrannosaurs may have lived side by side during the final million years before the asteroid impact that ended the age of dinosaurs.

NEOs include asteroids, comets, and fragments whose orbits bring them close to Earth's path around the sun.

But the use of low-earth orbit satellites for mobile communications has been criticised by astronomers, who say they pollute the night sky and make it more difficult to spot potential hazards such as asteroids.