Earth captures a ‘second moon’ this weekend

September 27 () –

NASA scientists have calculated that Earth will temporarily capture a “second moon” this Sunday, September 29.

The “minimoon” is the tiny asteroid 2024 PT5about 10 meters long, which normally orbits the Sun as part of a small asteroid belt that follows the Earth, and which For a couple of months it will remain in the orbit of our planet’s attraction.

“Based on the latest available data from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Horizons system, the temporary capture will begin at 19:54 UTC and end at 15:43 UTC on November 25,” told Space.com the expert in minimoon events and professor at the Complutense University of Madrid Carlos de la Fuente Marcos.

“The object that is going to visit us belongs to the Arjuna asteroid belta secondary asteroid belt formed by space rocks that follow orbits very similar to that of Earth at an average distance from the Sun of about 150 million kilometers,” Marcos said. “The objects in the Arjuna asteroid belt are part of the asteroid and comet population of near-Earth objects.”

These gravitational capture events They are actually quite common. “Some objects in the Arjuna asteroid belt can approach Earth at a close distance of about 4.5 million kilometers and at a relatively low speed of less than 3,540 km/h,” Marcos explained.

“Asteroid 2024 PT5 will not describe a complete orbit around the Earth. You could say that if a real satellite is like a customer buying products inside a store, Objects like 2024 PT5 are just window dressing“he added.