{"id":663413,"date":"2026-11-01T07:34:16","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T07:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/663413\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T07:34:16","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T07:34:16","slug":"on-this-day-in-space-oct-31-2015-creepy-skull-shaped-halloween-asteroid-flies-by-earth-nasa-names-it-the-great-pumpkin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/663413\/","title":{"rendered":"On this day in space! Oct. 31, 2015: Creepy skull-shaped Halloween asteroid flies by Earth, NASA names it the ‘Great Pumpkin’"},"content":{"rendered":"

asteroid shaped like a human skull<\/a> flew by Earth. It arrived with excellent timing on Halloween, which made the already-creepy asteroid even creepier.<\/p>\n

During its closest approach, the creepy asteroid<\/a> was about 300,000 miles from Earth, or 1.3 times the average distance between Earth and the moon<\/a>. So, it didn’t pose a threat to our planet. It was discovered by astronomers at Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS observatory<\/a> only three weeks before the flyby, and it was given the official designation “2015 TB145.” But no one knew what it looked like until the day before Halloween, when the Arecibo Observatory<\/a> in Puerto Rico captured the first radar images.<\/p>\n

NASA called the asteroid the “Great Pumpkin,” while others called it the “Halloween Asteroid.”<\/p>\n

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\"This\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: NAIC-Arecibo\/NSF)Why it mattered<\/p>\n

Be afraid, be very afraid… Okay, not really, but there is reason to be concerned about near-Earth objects and the time in which they are detected.<\/p>\n

“According to the catalog of near-Earth objects (NEOs) kept by the Minor Planet Center, this is the closest currently known approach by an object this large until asteroid 1999 AN10, at about 2,600 feet (800 meters) in size, approaches at about 1 lunar distance (238,000 miles from Earth) in August 2027,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) reported in 2015.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Near-Earth Object Observations Program, sometimes called \u201cSpaceguard,\u201d works to catalog these type of objects and predicts some of their paths if they could be potentially threats to our planet. While there are no known credible impact threats to date, it doesn’t mean the “Great Pumpkin,” or rather a great impactor, isn’t real.<\/p>\n

Image 1 of 2<\/p>\n

\"These<\/p>\n

These eight individual radar images of asteroid 2015 TB145 were captured on Oct. 31, 2015 using NASA\u2019s DSS-14 antenna in Goldstone, California and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.<\/p>\n

(Image credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/GSSR\/NRAO\/AUI\/NSF)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Halloween Asteroid 2015 TB145, shown here in an artist\u2019s illustration, whizzed by Earth on Nov. 11, 2018.<\/p>\n

(Image credit: JOS\u00c9 ANTONIO PE\u00d1AS\/SINC)<\/p>\n

\"These<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

As for 2015 TB145, it did return to Earth’s vicinity in 2018, but at a much more distant pass of about 24 million miles (38 million kilometers), “or about a quarter the distance between Earth and the sun,” according to JPL.<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive<\/a> and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\nOn this day in space! Oct. 30, 1964: NASA Lunar Landing Research Vehicle takes 1st test flight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter On October 31,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-663413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}