At the end of September, Earth will gain a temporary companion – an asteroid that will become a kind of “mini-moon” for us. Asteroid 2024 PT5, after being captured by Earth’s gravity, will stay near it from September 29 to November 25, 2024. Although it will not make a full orbit, it will still be our “temporary satellite” for some time.
The asteroid was discovered on August 7, 2024, as part of the ATLAS project at RRPA, and research on it was published in September in the American Astronomical Society. 2024 PT5 belongs to a group of asteroids that orbit the Sun in orbits similar to the Earth’s orbit. Such objects appear relatively often near our planet, although of course not all of them will come so close to Earth. 2024 PT5 is something of a phenomenon here.
Asteroid PT5 is about 10 meters in diameter and has a relatively slow speed compared to other similar objects, which allows Earth’s gravity to temporarily “capture” it. For exactly 56.6 days, instead of orbiting the Sun, PT5 will orbit Earth before leaving our orbit again and returning to a heliocentric path. We won’t have time to miss it much — the object will make another close flyby of Earth on January 9, 2025, but it won’t be as close as the one this year. The next “mini-moon” encounter will take place in… 2055.
You’re probably wondering whether we’ll be able to see our new companion. The problem is… not really. The asteroid is too small and emits too little light to be visible to the naked eye or even through most amateur telescopes. Its brightness won’t exceed 22nd magnitude, making it practically invisible to most commercially available optical devices.
This is not the first time that Earth has gained a temporary mini-satellite. In 2022, a similar event took place with the asteroid 2022 NX1, which was briefly “trapped” in Earth’s gravity field. The first encounter of 2022 NX1 with our planet took place in 1981, and the next one is not scheduled until 2051.
It’s a pity that we won’t see our new companion. It would be an amazing, unusual phenomenon, which would excite not only space and astronomy fanatics, but also “ordinary” people who have no interests in science. However, the mere knowledge that a visitor from distant space will be so close to us is interesting. The object does not pose any threat to us – even if it managed to enter the Earth’s atmosphere… it would probably burn up completely in it before it hit the ground.
Source: antyweb.pl
