Earth's mini 'second moon' is disappearing into space
Earth's mini moon is thought to be a piece of the actual Moon
- Published
A 'mini moon' that has been flying close to Earth for several months, is heading off into space.
The small 10-metre wide asteroid, also known as 2024 PT5, was first spotted in August and is thought to have broken off the Moon we see in the sky every night.
Josh Handal, program analyst for Nasa, wrote in a briefing: 鈥淕iven the similarity between asteroid 2024 PT5鈥檚 motion and that of our planet鈥檚, scientists at Nasa鈥檚 Center for Near Earth Object Studies suspect that the object could be a large chunk of rock ejected from the Moon鈥檚 surface after an asteroid impact long ago.鈥
Scientists have said the asteroid never fully entered Earth's orbit, but flew around the planet in a horse shoe shape.
It is now being pulled back around and away from the Earth due to the Sun's gravitational pull.
- Published5 days ago
- Published13 February 2023
The mini moon is considerably smaller than Earth's Moon seen here in this artist's impression
2024 PT5 was first spotted by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) - Nasa's asteroid detection system which is made up of four telescopes.
It has never posed a threat to Earth as it is so small and travelling through space around two million miles away.
It can't be seen with the naked eye, but scientists have been tracking it using powerful telescopes over the last few weeks.
The team monitoring the mini moon say the tracking data shows the asteroid is likely to reappear in January 2025 for a final high-speed pass at a closer distance, (around one million miles away from Earth), before disappearing completely until the year 2055.