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SEATTLE
— In a space game of "catch me if you can,"
a small asteroid shares the same orbit with Earth —
sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, but never quite touching
— as the two race around the sun, astronomers say.
"This
is one of the most interesting orbits for an asteroid we have
ever seen," said Paul Chodas, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory
researcher who studies asteroids and who first plotted the
bizarre motion of the space rock.
The asteroid,
called 2002 AA29, is in a precise circular orbit that follows
the same general path as the Earth around the sun. But, like
a mouse teasing a cat, the asteroid sometimes speeds up and
precedes the Earth and then later slows to drop into a follow-the-leader
approach.
But never
will the two meet, Chodas says. MORE
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