Every April, and for several weeks, the faint glow of a near-Earth asteroid glitters curiously over scientists’ telescopes. As part of the religious celebration of the annual event, a group of astronomers have made a surprising discovery about the tiny fragment: it doesn’t appear to be an ancient space rock. It looks like a shard of the moon.
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“I’ve looked at every near-Earth asteroid spectrum we’ve accessed, and nothing compares to it,” Ben Sharkey, a graduate student in the Department of Planetary Science at the University of Arizona. The paper’s lead author said in a statement.
Instead, Sharkey and his colleagues realized that the rocks had reflected light patterns, or spectra, that were closely related to lunar rocks brought in from Earth. NASA’s Apollo mission.
“These challenging observations were made possible by the enormous light-gathering power of the 8.4 meter (27.5 ft) Big Eye Telescope’s twin telescopes,” Alconrad, a scientist at the Big Eye Telescope Observatory and co-author of the study, said. , said in a statement.
But this is not the only proof of your origin, Aliwa. Quasisatellites – a subclass of near -Earth asteroids that orbit the Sun and Earth – orbit our planet with an unusual slope, which is why they appear in the night sky once a year.
“It is unlikely that a park-type near-Earth asteroid would transition into a satellite-like orbit like Kamo’oalewa,” said Renu Malhotra, professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona, in a statement.
He points out that the piece will not stay in this particular orbit for very long. Malhotra estimates it reached its current state 500 years ago, and believes its trajectory will change in about 300 years.
However, even with powerful instruments and detailed orbital analysis, the team has come a long way to uncover the secrets of Kamu Aliwa. Due to the rare appearance of the spheres, they had to build their dataset over several years to paint a complete picture of the extraterrestrial body – and find enough evidence to confirm the moon’s beginnings.
“We doubted ourselves to death,” Vishnu Reddy, study co-author of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said in a statement.
The project started in 2016 and lasted several years, but in 2020 the team missed the asteroid window due to COVID-19 restrictions. Now, in 2021, they are finally comfortable with the sheer amount of information they have gathered to publish Kamo`oalewa’s unique past. Sharkey said, “This spring, we got a much-needed follow-up note and said, ‘Wow that’s real.’ It’s easier to explain with the Moon than with any other idea.”
There is one unanswered question: How did Kamo`oalewa cut the moon?
As this is the first near-Earth asteroid to exhibit lunar characteristics, it remains unclear whether the space rock is an anomaly or if there are other lunar fragments lurking in the Solar System, waiting to be discovered.
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