A small asteroid, 2024 PT5, has completed its brief stint as a “mini-moon” orbiting Earth and has now resumed its journey around the Sun after drifting away on November 25. The 10-meter-wide space rock has been circling Earth since September 29, at a distance of approximately 3.2 million kilometers from the planet.
Discovered on August 7 through NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System, which tracks near-Earth objects, 2024 PT5 did not pose any threat to the planet, and scientists speculated that it might be a fragment from asteroid collisions on the Moon centuries ago.
Astronomers believe that the asteroid likely came from the Arjuna asteroid belt, which follows a similar path to Earth’s orbit around the Sun. NASA scientists suggest that the object may have been ejected from the Moon’s surface during a past asteroid impact. The temporary mini-moon did not come closer than about 1.1 million miles to Earth, maintaining a safe distance as it orbited the planet.
Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, an expert on mini-moons from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, confirmed that the object’s temporary capture by Earth’s gravity would end on November 25, 2024. The asteroid’s orbital path is expected to bring it back near Earth in 2055, but it will be moving too fast for Earth’s gravity to capture it again.
While it’s rare for asteroids to become temporary moons of Earth, it can occur when a space object approaches the planet in such a way that Earth’s gravity dominates over the Sun’s, drawing it into orbit.
Another asteroid, 2022 NX1, also spent time as a mini-moon in the past, having joined Earth’s system in 1981 and returned in 2022.