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Science & Tech.
Mahesh

20/09/24 11:58 AM IST

Mini-moon

In News
  • According to a new study, the Earth’s gravitational field will temporarily capture a small asteroid, called 2024 PT5, in late September. 
Mini- Moon
  • Mini-moons are asteroids that fail to escape Earth’s gravity and end up orbiting the planet for some time.
  • They are usually very small and hard to detect — only four mini-moons of Earth have ever been discovered, and none are still orbiting Earth, according to a report by The Planetary Society.
  • Some may actually have been space debris.
  • The Gaia spacecraft was once mistaken for a minimoon, and so were rocket stages from the Chang’e 2 and Lunar Prospector missions.
2024 PT5
  • The asteroid was discovered with the help of the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS).
  • It is estimated to be just 33 feet long and is too small to be visible to the naked eye or through typical amateur telescopes.
  • However, the asteroid is within the brightness range of telescopes used by professional astronomers.
  • 2024 PT5 has come to visit from “the Arjuna asteroid belt, a secondary asteroid belt made of space rocks that follow orbits very similar to that of Earth” at an average distance to the Sun of about 150 million kilometres.
  • The asteroid could possibly be a “piece of ejecta from an impact on the moon.
Significance
  • The observations of 2024 PT5 will help scientists expand the knowledge of asteroids that pass close to the Earth and those that sometimes collide with it.
  • Many asteroids contain valuable minerals and water, which companies hope to extract one day and use for purposes such as rocket fuel.
Source- Indian Express

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