RASHALOM

asteroid whose orbit is the smallest of any such object so far discovered; it takes only 278 days to circle the Sun. RaShalom was detected in 1978 by Eleanor Helin, a U.S. planetary scientist, at a distance of 29,000,000 kilometres (18,000,000 miles) from the Earth in a region of the solar system that was previously thought to be swept clean of asteroids. It measures about 4 km (2.5 mi) in diameter and is the largest member of the Aten-type asteroids, a class of minor planets that have orbits largely inside that of the Earth. RaShalom has a neutral gray colour and appears to be composed of rocks with water-bearing minerals and trace amounts of carbon.