Discovery date November 16, 2011 Alternative names MPO 246965 Discovered 16 November 2011 Asteroid group Apollo asteroid | MPC designation 2011 WL2 Minor planet category Apollo
NEO, PHA Absolute magnitude 20.8 | |
Discovered by Lincoln Laboratory ETS (now LINEAR) Discovery site Socorro, New Mexico, USA | ||
2011 WL2 is a small asteroid that is a Near-Earth object, a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid, and an Apollo asteroid.
Orbit
The orbit of 2011 WL2 makes it a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) whose orbit has been determined with about 1 year of observations. The orbit of 2011 WL2 is somewhat uncertain, but could pass a distance of 0.001635 AU (244,600 km) from the Earth in the year 2087. Only the nominal (best-fit) orbit shows a passage this close. The uncertainty region is still somewhat large due to a short observation arc. For comparison, the distance to the Moon is about 0.0026 AU (384,400 km). 2011 WL2 appears on the list of PHA close approaches issued by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), with the next close approach in the year 2038.
The Jupiter Tisserand invariant, used to distinguish different kinds of orbits, is 5.7.