Lost & Found: Near-Earth Asteroid Spotted after 66 Years: "Lost & Found: Near-Earth Asteroid Spotted after 66 Years
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 06:30 am ET
20 October 2003

A large near-Earth asteroid discovered in 1937 but not seen since was found again last week.

The rediscovery ends an investigation, ongoing for 66 years, while the boulder the size of a modest town repeatedly slipped by unnoticed.

The space rock, called Hermes, is well known to asteroid experts for its passage about twice as far from Earth as the Moon back in 1937. At the time, astronomers didn't know of any object that had ever come closer.

Hermes orbits the Sun on an elongated path that crosses the orbits of Earth and Venus, and then curves well out into the solar system. The new observations suggest it may be larger than originally thought, perhaps about a mile wide (1-2 kilometers).

Steven Chesley of NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), called Hermes' elusiveness 'the last real big remaining thorn in the side for this business' of large-asteroid detection."

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