the planet Land is saying goodbye to an asteroid that has been accompanying it like a “minimoon” for the last two months.
The harmless space rock will drift away on Monday, overtaken by the Sun’s stronger gravitational pull. However, it will quickly zoom in for a brief visit in January.
The POT will use a radar antenna to observe the 33-foot asteroid. In this way, scientists will better understand the object known as 2024 PT5, which is possibly a rock that was ejected from the Moon by the impact of an asteroid that formed a crater.
Although it is not technically a moon—NASA emphasizes that it was never captured by Earth’s gravity and in full orbit—it is “an interesting object” worthy of study.
The astrophysicist brothers who identified the asteroid’s “mini-moon” behavior, Raúl 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.
Currently more than 2 million miles away, the object is too small and faint to be seen without a powerful telescope. It will pass as close as 1.1 million miles to Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance before moving further out into the solar system as it orbits the Sun, not returning until 2055. That’s almost five times farther than the moon.
First sighted in August, the asteroid began its semi-circle around the Earth at the end of September, after falling under the effects of Earth’s gravity and following a horseshoe-shaped trajectory. By the time it returns next year, it will move too fast — more than double its September speed — to stay, Raúl de la Fuente Marcos said.
NASA will track 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.
Current data suggests that during its visit in 2055, the Sun-orbiting asteroid will once again make a temporary, partial orbit around Earth.