Icarus

Icarus, an Apollo asteroid (one that passes inside Earth’s orbit). It was discovered on June 27, 1949, by German-born American astronomer Walter Baade of the Hale Observatories (now Palomar Observatory), California. At the time of its discovery, Icarus had a more-eccentric orbit than any other known body in the solar system except for some comets. Its orbit extends from beyond Mars to within that of Mercury; it can approach within 6.4 million km (4 million miles) of Earth. It revolves around the Sun once in 1.12 Earth years. Icarus rotates once in 2.3 hours. It has a diameter of about 1 km (0.6 mile). In June 1968 Icarus became the first asteroid to be examined by radar. Compositionally, the asteroid’s surface resembles ordinary chondrite meteorites.