- Planet Earth is saying goodbye to a “mini-moon,” an innocuous asteroid called 2024 PT5 that has been trailing Earth for two months and will pass away on Monday, swept away by the Sun's stronger gravitational pull.
- First spotted in August, the asteroid began a brief gravitational interaction with Earth in late September.
- After its departure, the asteroid is not expected to return to Earth until 2055.
Planet Earth is parting ways with the asteroid, which for the past two months has been called a “mini-moon.”
The harmless space rock will fall off on Monday under the stronger gravitational pull of the sun. But he'll be moving closer in January for a quick visit.
Then NASA will use a radar antenna to observe the 33-foot asteroid. This should deepen scientists' understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, quite possibly a breakaway boulder. moon from an asteroid impact that formed a crater.
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While it's not technically a moon (NASA stresses that it was never captured by Earth's gravity and was entirely in orbit), it is an “interesting object” worthy of study.
A supermoon with a partial lunar eclipse rises over Lake Michigan in Chicago on September 17, 2024. Planet Earth is parting ways with an asteroid that has been walking around like a “mini-moon” for the past two months. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)
The astrophysicist brothers who determined the asteroid's “mini-moon behavior,” Raúl and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of the Complutense University of Madrid, collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands and made hundreds of observations.
The object is currently more than 2 million miles away and is too small and faint to be seen without a powerful telescope. It will pass within 1.1 million miles of Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance, before approaching the solar system as it orbits the sun, not returning until 2055. This is almost five times further than the Moon.
The NASA logo is displayed at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on June 21, 2023. (STEPHANIE REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
First discovered in August, the asteroid began half-circling Earth in late September after falling under the influence of Earth's gravity and following a horseshoe-shaped trajectory.
By the time he returns next year, he will be moving too fast – more than twice as fast as he was in September – to stay put, Raul de la Fuente Marcos said.
The waning moon can be seen on June 8, 2023 in New York. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
NASA will track The asteroid used the Goldstone Solar System radar antenna in California's Mojave Desert, which is part of a deep space network, for more than a week in January.
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Current data shows that during its visit in 2055, the Sun-orbiting asteroid will once again make a temporary and partial orbit around the Earth.
