Astronomers believe that as of September 29, a second ‘moon’ (Asteroid PT5) will join the earth’s orbit until November 25

The ‘moon’, believed to be an asteroid will orbit the earth before it eventually breaks free from the planet’s gravitational  orbit.

The mini-moon is approximately 10m thus making it impossible to be seen from the earth. National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) discovered the asteroid on August 7.

It originated from the Arjuna asteroid belt, where it is likely to return  to after exiting earth.

“Earth can regularly capture asteroids from the Near-Earth object (NEO) population and pull them into orbit, making them mini-moons. Sometimes, these temporary captures do not complete one revolution before dropping out of orbit and returning to their regular heliocentric trajectories,” Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos said in their research work.

“Asteroid 2024 PT5 was discovered on 2024 August 7 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (J. L. Tonry et al. 2018) observing with the instrument located in Sutherland, South Africa (J. Tonry et al. 2024).” they said.

According to NASA, Near-Earth objects (NEOs) that follow horseshoe paths, and approach the earth at close range and low relative velocity, may undergo mini-moon events in which their geocentric energy becomes negative for hours, days or months, but without completing one revolution around Earth while bound.

An example of NEO experiencing such a temporarily captured flyby is 2022 NX1, which was a short-lived mini-moon in 1981 and 2022.

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