Earth to capture a 'second moon' this weekend, NASA says

Earth will capture a miniature, “second moon” this week, according to NASA scientists.

The new moon is actually a tiny asteroid dubbed 2024 PT5. It will start orbiting the planet in a horseshoe path and stick around for a little less than two months before escaping Earth’s gravitational pull and going back to its regular orbit around the sun.

“According to the latest data available from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Horizons System, the temporary capture will start at 15:54 EDT (on Sunday) and will end at 11:43 EDT on November 25,” mini-moon event expert and Universidad Complutense de Madrid professor Carlos de la Fuente Marcos told Space.com.

2024 PT5 is part of “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 93 million miles,” Marcos said.

He added that the asteroid, which poses no threat to the planet, will travel about 2,200 miles per hour while maintaining a distance of around 2.8 million miles from Earth. By comparison, the average distance between the Earth and the moon is 238,855 miles. The moon is also considerably larger, about 2,159 miles in diameter compared to the asteroid’s slim 37-foot width.

Unlike the moon, 2024 PT5 won’t be observable to the casual stargazer because of its size.

“The object is too small and dim for typical amateur telescopes and binoculars. However, the object is well within the brightness range of typical telescopes used by professional astronomers,” Marcos said.

NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System first spotted the asteroid Aug. 7.

Mini-moons have occurred in the past. The 2022 NX1 asteroid joined Earth’s orbit in 1981 and 2022, according to BBC News.

“This story highlights just how busy our solar system is and how much there is out there that we haven’t discovered, because this asteroid was only discovered this year,” astronomer and podcaster Dr. Jennifer Millard told BBC News.

_____