Earth will have a temporary “mini moon” for 2 months. Here’s what’s happening

WASHINGTON – Earth’s Moon will soon have company – a “mini-moon”.

The mini-moon is actually an asteroid the size of a school bus measuring 10 meters. When it passes Earth on Sunday, it will be temporarily trapped by our planet’s gravity and orbit the globe, but only for about two months.

The space rock – 2024 PT5 – was first spotted in August by astronomers at the Complutense University of Madrid using a powerful telescope in Sutherland, South Africa.

These short-lived mini-moons are probably more common than we think, said Richard Binzel, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The last known one was detected in 2020.

“It happens quite frequently, but we rarely see them because they are very small and very difficult to detect,” he said. “Only recently have our investigative capabilities reached the point of spotting them regularly.”

This will not be visible to the naked eye or through amateur telescopes, he said.

The discovery by Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos was published by the American Astronomical Society.

Binzel, who was not involved in the research, said it was unclear whether the space rock came from an asteroid or a “piece of the moon that exploded.”

The mini moon will circle the globe for nearly 57 days but will not complete a full orbit. On November 25, it will separate from Earth and continue its solo trajectory through the cosmos. It is expected to return in 2055.

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