A new picture of Earth’s ‘mini moon’
Randy Mann.
JAKE PARRISH/Press
For centuries, people believed that the Moon was Earth’s only natural satellite. While this remains true for permanent moons, such as ours, astronomers have discovered in recent years that Earth occasionally acquires tiny temporary companions known as mini moons. These small asteroids are briefly captured by Earth's gravity, orbit the planet for a limited time, and eventually escape back into orbit around the Sun.
I have written other articles featuring mini-moons, but last week, China captured images of an asteroid, which has also been referred to as a mini moon, that has been orbiting Earth. The spacecraft known as Tianwen-2 photographed the object and was ultimately designed to collect and return samples of this object to Earth for scientific study. According to an article by Scientific American, the object is called Kamo’oalewa and orbits our planet as close as 9 million miles and is far away as approximately 25 million miles.
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