Home » Technology » Earth’s Persistent Space Companion: The Quasi-Moon Asteroid Orbiting Our Planet for Over 2000 Years

Earth’s Persistent Space Companion: The Quasi-Moon Asteroid Orbiting Our Planet for Over 2000 Years

Earth has a very persistent space companion. Astronomers only recently discovered it. It is an asteroid up to twenty meters wide and circling millions of kilometers from our planet. It has remained in its orbit for over two thousand years. Researchers assure that it is unlikely to crash on Earth.

Asteroid orbiting Earth. Illustrative image

|
Foto: Shutterstock

According to the numbers and the laws of cosmic physics, this is just a big coincidence, but by human standards, it is an age-old faithfulness. Several observatories have confirmed sightings of a piece of space rock orbiting the Sun in an Earth-like orbit some fourteen million kilometers away from our planet.

He got designation 2023 FW13 and other calculations have shown that it has accompanied the planet since sometime around 100 BC.

A giant asteroid is headed for Earth. It could hit the planet on Valentine’s Day 2046

“Astronomers consider it a quasi-moon because it orbits the Sun at a similar time to Earth, but is only slightly affected by our planet’s gravitational pull. Researchers estimate its length to be fifteen meters, so it would fit about three large SUVs parked close to each other. In its orbit around the Sun asteroid it also orbits the Earth, to which it comes closest at 14 million kilometers. For comparison according to NASA data: Moon it has a diameter of 3474 kilometers and approaches the Earth up to 364 thousand kilometers,” the online magazine Live Science summarized the astronomers’ findings.

Source: Youtube

Asteroid first observed by the Hawaiian Pan-STARRS observatory. Its existence was then confirmed by another observatory in Hawaii and two in Arizona. On April 1, the International Astronomical Union added it to the list of new space objects in the solar system.

The quasi-moon that orbits the Earth the longest

French astronomer and journalist Adrien Coffinet was immediately intrigued by the newly announced asteroid and decided to calculate models of its orbit in the past and future, stated astronomy website Sky & Telescope. The calculation made it possible to find in the available data some earlier observations going back to 2012. Thanks to this, Coffinet was able to refine its calculations.

And the result confirmed not only that asteroid is a quasi-moon, but also that it orbits together with the Earth space thousands of years. “It appears to be the longest known quasi-moon orbiting Earth so far,” the astronomer told the website.

However, according to Alan Harris of the Space Science Institute, the asteroid is actually orbiting Sun and is not gravitationally bound to Earth. However, it is in so-called orbital resonance with our planet, when a gravitational bond is created between the bodies, and therefore it circles in a very wide loop around the Earth.

“It orbits in such a distant orbit that the Earth plays virtually no role in its movement. Their connection is purely coincidental,” he pointed out to Sky & Telescope.

British scientists believe that a supermassive black hole has turned towards Earth.  Illustrative image

A new supermassive black hole has scientists confused. She turned towards Earth

According to Harris’ estimate, the random formation of a quasi-orbit is not unique. A quick calculation shows that there should be about two million near-Earth asteroids of the same size or larger, and of these, at least three orbit the Earth in a similar manner. “The most unusual thing about the whole thing is the fact that this particular asteroid was detected by observation,” Harris said.

Useful stairs

He also pointed out that it was unlikely that these bodies would ever turn into a serious threat. “The good news is that such an orbit does not suddenly change into an impact trajectory. It is even more stable than other orbits that do not resonate with the Earth’s,” said the astronomer.

A piece of meteorite crashed into a house in New Jersey on Monday.  Scientists believe that it could be a five billion year old part of Halley's Comet.  Illustrative image

They did not expect such a treasure. A meteorite fell into the family’s house, it is from Halley’s comet

Asteroid specialist Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sees similar asteroids as potentially useful stepping stones in on the way to Mars. Because their orbits are nearly aligned with Earth, their relative velocity is small enough to space ship received in months instead of years.

“Given this and their low gravity, it makes sense to test our way into deep space with them first before sending the ship and crew up to Mars,” Binzel mused.


2023-06-03 03:30:50
#Earth #orbited #Moon #newly #discovered #asteroid #planet #thousands #years

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.