Astronomers have recently discovered a small asteroid, just 33 feet in length, that will become Earth’s “mini-moon.”
The asteroid, 2024 PT5, will be pulled into Earth’s orbit for a brief period, staying with us from September 29 to November 25, according to a new report published in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society. The asteroid will complete a singular loop around Earth, effectively becoming a temporary satellite, or “mini-moon,” before moving on to the farther reaches of the solar system.
Harvard asteroid dynamics researcher Federica Spoto, who was not part of the study, expressed excitement about the discovery, noting: “It is pretty cool.”
She further explained that observations of 2024 PT5 could help scientists better study similar space rocks and potentially improve methods for detecting asteroids that may be on a collision course with Earth.
Mini-moons like 2024 PT5 are extremely difficult to observe due to their fleeting nature. They often make brief appearances in Earth’s orbit, which complicates efforts to categorize them. Some previously identified “mini-moons” have turned out to be manmade objects, such as the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, which was misidentified as a moon in 2015. However, scientists are confident that 2024 PT5 is a natural object, not debris from a spacecraft.
“Every time an object with an orbit so Earth-like is discovered, there is a chance that we are just recovering space debris,” Coauthor Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, an astronomer from the Complutense University of Madrid, told the New York Times.
But in this case, he emphasized that 2024 PT5 is: “A natural object, no doubt about that.”
Interestingly, some researchers even suggest that this asteroid might once have been a piece of the Moon itself. While its classification as a “mini-moon” remains up for debate, the discovery offers a fascinating glimpse into the diverse objects that pass through Earth’s orbit.
Although 2024 PT5 will only make a brief visit, it is expected to pass by Earth again in January, and even further in the future in 2055.