Earth’s moon will soon have a temporary junior companion, an apparent mini moon revolving around our planet for about two months. In a rare event, an asteroid will be captured by Earth’s gravity and will orbit the earth from September 29 to November 25 this year.
The asteroid 2024 PT5 was spotted on August 7 using the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), a NASA-funded asteroid impact early warning system.
According to a report published in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, the asteroid is not too big with a diameter of just 10 metre (33 feet). During its 53-day tenure around the earth, 2024 PT5 will not be able to make a full orbit, instead it will perform a horseshoe loop before breaking away from the earth’s gravitational pull.
The RNAAS report, authored by Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raul de la Fuente Marcos, says that Earth has a tendency to capture asteroids and pull them into its orbit. These asteroids sometimes perform one or more full revolutions around our planet while other times, they break away from the earth’s elliptical path before completing an orbit.
In 2006, an asteroid captured by Earth’s gravity revolved around it for a year from July 2006 to July 2007. However, the newly discovered 2024 PT5 seems to resemble the path of 2022 NX1, a temporary flyby that revolved around Earth in 1981 and 2022 without ever completing an orbit and will likely return to take another semi round in 2051.
While Earth may sometimes pull space junk into its orbit, the report says that 2024 PT5 is a natural object as “its short-term dynamical evolution closely resembles that of 2022 NX1, a confirmed natural object.” The report also indicates that its orbital properties resemble that of asteroids that come from the Arjuna asteroid belt.
