An asteroid that has been following Earth as a “mini moon” for the last two months is leaving the planet.
On Monday, the sun’s gravity will pull the innocuous space rock away with greater force. In January, however, it will zip closer for a brief visit.
The 33-foot (10-meter) asteroid will then be observed by NASA using a radar antenna. That should help scientists better understand 2024 PT5, which is presumably a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an asteroid that formed craters during impact.
NASA emphasizes that it was never caught by Earth’s gravity and was always in full orbit, so even though it isn’t technically a moon, it is “an interesting object” that merits investigation.
The brothers, astrophysicists, who discovered the asteroid’s “mini moon behavior,” ” Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far.
Currently more than 2 million miles (3.5 million kilometers) away, the object is too small and faint to see without a powerful telescope. It will pass as close as 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) of Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance before it zooms farther into the solar system while orbiting the sun, not to return until 2055. That’s almost five times farther than the moon.
First spotted in August, the asteroid began its semi jog around Earth in late September, after coming under the grips of Earth’s gravity and following a horseshoe-shaped path. By the time it returns next year, it will be moving too fast — more than double its speed from September — to hang around, said Raul de la Fuente Marcos.
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 suggest that during its 2055 visit, the sun-circling asteroid will once again make a temporary and partial lap around Earth.
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