Earth gets a second companion for a few weeks

“It’s pretty cool,” astrophysicist Federica Spoto of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told The New York Times.

Not visible to the naked eye
Astro fans can’t hope for two clearly visible moons in the night sky, however: the asteroid is too small to be seen with the naked eye. Most asteroids zoom by more or less far from Earth; very rarely does one enter our planet’s atmosphere or even create a crater.

‘2024 PT5’ has a different fate: it will be captured by Earth’s gravity and will accompany the planet for about eight weeks, researchers report in the American Astronomical Society’s ‘Research Notes’.

The asteroid was detected in early August using ground-based telescopes. The piece is only about ten meters high. “The discovery reminds us that there is a fairly busy highway around the Earth,” says Spoto.

Asteroid could be fragment of moon
The asteroid’s two-month orbit around the Earth is crowned with a bizarre detail: the boulder is likely a piece of ejecta from an impact on the moon, it was said. The temporary miniature moon could therefore be a fragment of the real moon.

Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid explain in the ‘Research Notes’ that it is probably a so-called Arjuna asteroid with an Earth-like orbit around the sun. It is unlikely to be an artificial object, such as space debris, because of its trajectory.

In the coming months, those who dream of mining for resources in space may be looking to the sky with particular longing: “Every time there’s talk of asteroid mining, it’s about mini-moons,” Spoto told the New York Times. A metal-rich boulder orbiting Earth would make a prime target for prospectors.