1566 Icarus

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**1566 Icarus**
Discovery
Discovered by:	Walter Baade
Discovery date:	June 27, 1949
Alternative names:	1949 MA
Minor planet category:	Apollo asteroid, Mercury-crosser asteroid, Venus-crosser asteroid, Mars-crosser asteroid
Orbital characteristics
Epoch July 14, 2004 (JD 2453200.5)
Aphelion distance:	294.590 Gm (1.969 AU)
Perihelion distance:	27.923 Gm (0.187 AU)
Semi-major axis:	161.257 G m (1.078 AU)
Eccentricity:	0.827
Orbital period:	408.778 d (1.12 a)
Avg. orbital speed:	22.88 km/s
Mean anomaly:	124.422°
Inclination:	22.854°
Longitude of ascending node:	88.090°
Argument of perihelion:	31.290°
Physical characteristics
Dimensions:	1.4 km
Mass:	2.9×10¹² kg
Mean density:	2 ? g/cm³
Equatorial surface gravity:	0.000 39 m/s²
Escape velocity:	0.000 74 km/s
Rotation period:	0.094 71 d
Albedo:	0.4^[1]
Temperature:	~242 K
Spectral type:	U
Absolute magnitude:	16.9

1566 Icarus is an Apollo asteroid (a sub-class of near-Earth asteroid) whose unusual characteristic is that at perihelion it is closer to the Sun than Mercury; it is said to be a Mercury-crosser asteroid. It is also a Venus and Mars-crosser. It is named after Icarus of Greek mythology, who flew too close to the Sun. It was discovered in 1949 by Walter Baade.

Icarus makes a close approach to Earth at gaps of 9, 19, or 38 years. Rarely, it comes as close as 6.4 Gm (16 lunar distances and 4 million miles), as it did on June 14, 1968.The last close approach was in 1996,at 15.1 Gm, almost 40 times as far as the Moon. ^[2] The next close approach will be June 16, 2015, at 8.1 Gm (5 million miles).

In 1967, Professor Paul Sandorff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave his students the task to devise a plan as to destroy Icarus in the case it was on a collision course with Earth. This plan is known as Project Icarus (which was the basis for the 1979 science fiction film Meteor, starring Sean Connery).