Planet Earth is preparing to say goodbye to an asteroid that has been considered a “mini-moon” for the past two months. A harmless cosmic rock known as 2024 PT5 will break away from Earth on Monday, defying the Sun’s stronger gravitational pull. However, in January the asteroid will again approach our planet for a quick inspection. NASA plans to use a radar antenna to observe this object, which is about 10 meters in size, which will help scientists study it further. It is believed that 2024 PT5 may be a rock that was separated from the Moon as a result of a collision with an asteroid, which created a crater.
As Day.Az reports, citing the Associated Press, although this object is not technically the Moon – NASA emphasizes that the asteroid was never captured by Earth’s gravity and was not in orbit of our planet – its behavior is of interest to scientists and deserves attention.
Raúl and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, the astrophysicists at the Complutense University of Madrid who first noticed the “mini-moon behavior”, carried out hundreds of observations using telescopes in the Canary Islands. According to them, the asteroid, although located at a distance of more than 3.5 million kilometers from Earth, is too small and faint to be seen without powerful telescopes.
In January 2024, the object will approach Earth within 1.8 million kilometers, leaving a safe gap before returning to its orbital path around the Sun. After this, the asteroid will leave the solar system and return only in 2055, which is almost five times further than the distance to the Moon.
The asteroid was first spotted in August, and from late September it began a semicircular trajectory around the Earth, falling under the influence of Earth’s gravity. However, according to Raul de la Fuente Marcos, its motion will be doubled when it returns next year and the object will not linger in orbit.
NASA tracked the asteroid for more than a week in January using the Goldstone solar system radar antenna in California’s Mojave Desert, part of the Deep Space Network.
As experts noted, in 2055 the asteroid will again make a temporary revolution around the Earth, albeit with a partial trajectory, which will continue to surprise scientists.