Get the latest tech news

Earth's 'Mini Moon' May Have Been a Chunk of Our Actual Moon

An asteroid named 2024 PT5, recently exhibiting "mini moon" behavior around Earth, may have been a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid," reports the Associated Press. The 33-foot space rock is expected to pass safely near Earth in January, when it will be c...

From the report: While not technically a moon -- NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth's gravity and fully in orbit -- it's "an interesting object" worthy of study. The astrophysicist brothers who identified 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. [...] 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.

Get the Android app