Asteroid News: NASA Reveals New Mini-Moon in Earth's Orbit
NASA Scientists Discovers a New Companion of Earth
NASA made a recent discovery -- an asteroid that has been orbiting Earth for about 100 years now and is not escaping our planet any time soon, keeping our solitary moon company. Like our natural satellite, it's likely to stay in orbit around Earth for a long time.
This quasi-satellite is known as Asteroid 2016 HO3. It was discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid survey telescope on April 27, 2016 based in Haleakala, Hawaii.
Accompanying Earth for Almost a Century
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According to astrophysicists, this mini-moon is around 120 feet across (36.5 meters) and about 300 feet wide (91 meters). Its orbit is tilted elliptically around our planet, which causes it to sometimes move faster than Earth relative to the Sun and also relatively closer.
The mini-moon was recently discovered on April 27 despite the fact that it has been revolving around our planet for about a century now because of its small size. A celestial body this small isn't particularly bright and is hard to detect. The mini-moon's irregular orbit may be another reason why it has eluded survey telescopes.
Playing a Game of Leap Frog with Earth
Moreover, Asteroid 2016 HO3 is called a quasi-satellite because it's not nearly as close to the Earth as the moon is. In fact, it's so far away that it is, on average, 38 times farther than the moon.
Paul Chodas of the NASA Center for Near Earth Objects said, "The asteroid's loops around Earth drift a little ahead or behind from year to year, but when they drift too far forward or backward, Earth's gravity is just strong enough to reverse the drift and hold onto the asteroid so that it never wanders farther away than about 100 times the distance of the moon."
While the asteroid orbits the sun, NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory describes its motion as playing a game of leap frog with Earth. During one half of its Earth orbit, the quasi-satellite falls behind our planet, while the other half causes it to be ahead. NASA says it isn't a threat to Earth and has never gone closer than 14 million kilometers (9 million miles).
A similar occurrence happened a decade ago when asteroid 2003 YN107 got caught in Earth's gravitational field. This didn't take as long and the asteroid is now far from Earth's gravity. In contrast, all indications show that this new moon will stay for a much longer time. Chodas predicts that asteroid 2016 HO3 will stay in Earth's orbit for "centuries to come."
