Earth to gain temporary second moon as asteroid 2024 pt5 orbits
For almost two months, from 29 September to 25 November, Earth will have two natural satellites, astronomers have announced. In addition to the Moon, an asteroid called 2024 PT5, known as a minimoon, will also be revolving around our planet.
21 September 2024 10:39
The asteroid 2024 PT5 was discovered on 7 August this year by the ATLAS system (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System), a tool for detecting potentially hazardous asteroids. The asteroid is about 33 feet in diameter, making it not bright enough to be seen with the naked eye or with amateur telescopes.
"Earth can regularly capture asteroids from Near-Earth Objects (NEO) and pull them into orbit, creating minimoons," report astronomers Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos from the Complutense University of Madrid in "The Research Notes of the AAS." They discovered the properties of the asteroid 2024 PT5 during routine monitoring of newly discovered objects.
Conditions an object must meet to become a minimoon
Damian Jabłeka, deputy director of the Silesian Planetarium, explains that even a small celestial body can be considered a natural satellite as long as it enters Earth's orbit and remains there for a period. For this to happen, certain conditions must be met. "Sometimes it happens that the combination of distance, flight direction, and speed of such a small celestial body causes it to be captured in the gravitational potential of our planet and begin to orbit," Jabłeka told PAP.
Prof. Carlos de la Fuente Marcos from the Complutense University of Madrid, quoted by Space.com, explained that to become a minimoon, an approaching body must reach a distance of about 1.7 million miles (2.8 million km) from Earth and move "slowly," at a speed of about 1,400 miles per hour (2,200 km/h).
The asteroid will return in several decades
"It hasn't happened yet that, for example, asteroids start to orbit the Earth permanently because the presence of the Moon and the Sun causes them to drift into space after a few orbits," noted Damian Jabłeka. He also added that the studied and documented celestial bodies that have remained in Earth's orbit for a longer period are the asteroid 2006 RH120, which from July 2006 to 2007 was our second moon, and 2020 CD3, which orbited Earth for three years.
After leaving Earth's orbit, the object 2024 PT5 will be closest to Earth on 9 January 2025, and will then return only in 2055.
