A Second ‘Moon’ Will Soon Orbit Earth
Meanwhile, another asteroid is flying close to Earth and China’s preparing its own planetary defense test.
Close to presidential elections, there are often calls for the “Sweet Meteor of Death” to intercede before choices must be made.
And there is one asteroid that is attempting to answer the call.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is monitoring a “potentially hazardous” asteroid that is moving past Earth on Tuesday.
NASA told Fox News Digital that the rocky object, which has been named 2024 ON, is 350 meters long by 180 meters wide, which roughly equals 1,150 feet by 590 feet – larger than previous estimates.
NASA has deemed the asteroid “stadium-sized” and reported it was 621,000 miles away from Earth on Tuesday morning, which is considered relatively close. Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Fox News Digital that an asteroid of this size coming this close to Earth only happens every five to ten years.
Sweet meteor of death, 2024! https://t.co/MQjb6STlwt
— Nigel Byrum (@Bayrunner87) February 9, 2024
Meanwhile, another asteroid is on a trajectory to be captured by Earth’s orbit temporarily and become a second moon!
This month, Earth will grab itself a second moon in the form of the tiny asteroid 2024 PT5.
Unlike the moon, Earth’s primary companion which has accompanied our planet for around 4 billion years, this “new mini-moon” will stick around for just two months before it heads back to its home in an asteroid belt trailing our planet and orbiting the sun.
A team of scientists well-versed in the study of so-called “mini-moon events ” identified the forthcoming gravitational capture event. They spotted the peculiar dynamic properties of 2024 PT5 as they routinely monitored newly discovered objects for potentially interesting behavior.
The moon will be small, measuring about 10 meters. The asteroid might have been the result of an impact that occurred on our Moon’s surface long ago.
Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said 2024 PT5 is possibly a piece of ejecta from an impact on the moon, meaning the mini-moon may have originated as a piece of the original moon, according to the New York Times.
Mini-moons can come in multiple types, according to research. The first, “temporary captured orbiters,” are long episodes in which bodies perform one or more revolutions around the Earth and can remain in the planet’s orbit for many months, or even years. The second, which includes the upcoming mini-moon, are dubbed “temporary captured flybys,” as they do not complete one revolution and remain in Earth’s orbit for a very short period of time.
With this information in mind, it might be significant if the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cleared the path for innovative space exploration so humanity might have some relocation options when it comes.
Would be nice if the FAA would stop thwarting your plans for the long-term salvation of our species. pic.twitter.com/9qlLCAV0xK
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) September 18, 2024
Meanwhile, China is planning to conduct its own planetary defense test.
China is planning its first mission to impact an asteroid in the name of planetary defense. The mission will serve a dual purpose: One craft will impact the asteroid while its partner observes the space rock to learn more about the solar system and its formation.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) mission may have already selected its target — the near-Earth object (NEO) 2015 XF261, a nearly 100-foot-wide (30 meters) asteroid.
According to the small-body database managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 2015 XF261 last came relatively close to Earth just this week, on Tuesday (July 9), when it passed within 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) of our planet. The space rock was traveling at around 26,000 mph (42,000 kph), roughly 30 times faster than the speed of sound.
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Comments
It is pathetic that Space.com is calling this meteor a “moon”. And this BS about “mini-moon events” … from the same morons who decided to declare that Pluto was no longer a “planet” …
A “moon” is an object in orbit around another.l PERIOD. A fly-by is most certainly NOT a moon of any sort. I think that these scientists must be getting more money if they label something a “moon”. By this group’s definition, a rock that I throw is a “moon” and the arc of its path is a “mini-moon event”. This is crazy.
As to the meteor coming close to Earth. That’s what happens in space. There’s nothing we can do about it. Eventually, one will hit us – a big one. If there were never any wars on Earth we would not have any chance to field any sort of a defense against it since we would have no reason to be building weapons of such possible devastation. If there were never any wars on Earth we would probably still be in the neolithic age … maybe just pokng into the bronze age at this point.
If it’s in an orbit (even for just a single orbit) it’s a “satellite.” If it’s a natural satellite, it’s a “moon.” A natural satellite need not be captured permanently to be a moon. Even an unstable orbit will do.
A “meteor” is a natural object from space that enters the earth’s atmosphere. If it hits the ground, it is referred to as a “meteorite.” 2024 ON will not enter the earth’s atmosphere. It will not become a meteor, it can’t become a meteorite.
My mistake on “meteor”. But a fly-by is no “moon” of any sort.
But it’s not just a fly-by. It will actually be in orbit for a very short period, before breaking away. That counts (barely) as a satellite.
Do we trust China to not create more problems with this “test”?
If their celestial mechanics and vector calculus are as competent as their lab safety protocols are, I expect this project to end in a large, smouldering crater that may or may not end all life on earth.
We don’t have to trust them; they’re going to do it and we can’t stop them, so it will turn out however it turns out.
Actually, we could stop them. But of course, there would be consequences.
My first thought
It’s nearly identical with a mission NASA already did two years ago this week. The main difference is that China is also sending a separate “independent observer” craft to assess the post-impact results up close instead of assessing them from Earth..
I don’t!
“With this information in mind, it might be significant if the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cleared the path for innovative space exploration so humanity might have some relocation options when it comes.”
I think someone has watched “Firefly” a few too many times.
Earth is our home. That’s it. We’re not “relocating” anywhere.
Speak for yourself.
Some will relocate, most will not. Most certainly, much of humanity is too dumb to be worth relocating or too deranged to be included.
He’s absolutely right. Opportunists, entrepreneurs, and frontiersmen are those who most value liberty. Think of the how the Europeans and Asians who didn’t emigrate to the New World fared, compared to those who did. Think of the anti-separatist Canadians, who declared that they were content to live under the rule of the King. Think of how we left them all behind for 250 years.
Assuming that we don’t let the leftists take Earth society back 1000 years as they are trying … the vast majority of the human population will likely be outside of earth within 100 years. There could easily be trillions of people in space – of course, that number will probably take a bit more than 100 years, but once we start colonizing the solar system it will be exponential growth.
Now, getting out of this solar system … that’s a whole other challenge …
Yeah I was gonna say, we’re designed for here. Or maybe it’s true and we came from Mars.
“TradiSHUNNNNNNNNNNNN…”
(Oops! At the end of that play, Tevye ended up relocating somewhere.)
Milhouse is working on his own transporter apparently
Calling this a moon is a stretch, it is a natural slingshot fly by.
Yeah, you’d have to put in a good orbit or two to get the Moon Certification.
Maybe the IDF is tucked away in one of the asteroids waiting to flatten Hamas, Hezbollah and co.
There is no way to have peace in the Middle East without banishing all terrorists and their supporters and crushing Iran.
I thought kim kardashian already too care of that
When thinking about this object, one must consider the *thousands* of smaller natural objects in various orbits, from handfuls of gravel in Earth orbit to medium-sized rocks in bizarre ‘roughly the same as our orbit only backwards with visits every few decades’ to chunks of dust and rock in the L4 and L5 moon *AND* Earth Lagrange points. Even on occasion weird things we thought had been thrown away like J002E3 a Saturn V third stage that is in a long loop that brings it back roughly every 40 years. There’s a lot of things out there like this, just smaller.