In 2015, a skull-shaped space rock passed Earth on Halloween; NASA said it might be a dead comet; here's what scientists found

A skull-shaped space rock passed Earth on Halloween in 2015. Things got even more suspicious when radar images made it look like a human skull. Scientists believed it was likely a dead comic.

What exactly happened?

On October 31, 2015, an object designated 2015 TB145 passed Earth at a distance of around 486,000 kilometres. Radar images that were captured before the flyby showed that the object looked like a human skull. The timing was also shocking, as the incident happened on Halloween. Notably, the resemblance was just an interpretation of the images, and not the object's real shape.

The Arecibo Observatory's radar images revealed that it was a bit spherical in shape and was 600 metres in diameter.

Was it a dead comet?

After the incident, scientists believed that it was a dead comet. Observations from NASA's Infrared Telescope facility in Hawaii claimed the 2015 TB145 was likely a comet. It stated that the comet had lost most of its volatile materials after it repeatedly passed around the Sun.

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Some also believed that it looked like an asteroid as they found no visible comet-like coma around it. According to reports, its reflectivity was about 6%. This supported the possibility of a cometary origin.

The discovery was part of a NASA-funded programme to observe near-Earth objects.

All of this was also studied. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico produced radar images of the object. Infrared observations and other observatories were also used to study about it.

According to reports, the object completed one rotation in approximately five hours.

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Was it dangerous?

NASA claimed it was not dangerous and termed it safe. The object passed at about 1.3 times the average Earth-Moon distance.

The timing also made things suspicious. It was the time of Halloween and a skull-like radar appearance made 2015 TB145 an unusual thing about how scientists study near-Earth objects. NASA described it as likely a dead comet.