Atom & Cosmos

An asteroid's star turn, a 520-day mission to nowhere and the brightest millisecond pulsar ever

Close encounters of the asteroid kind
A nearly 400-meter-long asteroid is ready for its close-up. Telescopes will zoom in on the space rock — clunkily known as 2005 YU55 — when it passes just 323,000 kilometers from Earth on November 8, the closest visit by an asteroid this size since 1976.