Sign In
Learn bits
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

More Related Current Affairs View All

17 Sep

Reasons Behind the heavy rain in Uttarakhand, Himachal

'Dehradun and several other districts in Uttarakhand have experienced very heavy rainfall over the past few days, triggering landslides in multiple areas and causing rivers to swel

Read More

08 Sep

Rajasthan’s coaching centre Bill

'The Rajasthan Coaching Centres (Control and Regulation) Bill, 2025, is a significant piece of legislation passed by the Rajasthan Assembly to regulate and oversee the state's burg

Read More

28 Aug

IADT-1

'Recently, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully carried out its first Integrated Air Drop Test (IADT-1), a crucial milestone in the preparation for the countr

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps