Planet Earth is saying goodbye to an asteroid that has been serving as a “mini moon” for the past two months.
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The harmless space rock will detach on Monday, overwhelmed by the sun’s stronger gravity. But it’s getting closer for a quick visit in January.
NASA will then use a radar antenna to observe the 10-meter-long asteroid. That should improve scientists’ understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, possibly a boulder blasted from the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid.
Although it is not technically a moon (NASA emphasizes that it has never been captured by Earth’s gravity and is entirely in orbit), it is “an interesting object” worth studying.
The astrophysicists brothers who identified the asteroid’s ‘mini-moon behavior’, Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of the Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far.
The object is currently more than 3.5 million kilometers away and is too small and faint to see without a powerful telescope. In January it will pass within 1.8 million kilometers of Earth, maintaining a safe distance before zooming further into the solar system as it orbits the sun, not returning until 2055. That is almost five times further than the moon. .
The asteroid was first spotted in August and began its semi-jog around Earth in late September, after coming under the grip of Earth’s gravity and following a horseshoe-shaped path. By the time he returns next year, he will be moving too fast — more than double September’s speed — to stick around, Raul de la Fuente Marcos said.
NASA will track the asteroid for more than a week in January using the radar antenna of the Goldstone Solar System in California’s Mojave Desert, part of the Deep Space Network.
Current data shows that the Sun-orbiting asteroid will make another temporary and partial orbit around Earth during its visit in 2055.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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