Sign In
Learn bits
Science & Tech.
Mahesh

20/09/24 11:58 AM IST

Mini-moon

In News
  • According to a new study, the Earth’s gravitational field will temporarily capture a small asteroid, called 2024 PT5, in late September. 
Mini- Moon
  • Mini-moons are asteroids that fail to escape Earth’s gravity and end up orbiting the planet for some time.
  • They are usually very small and hard to detect — only four mini-moons of Earth have ever been discovered, and none are still orbiting Earth, according to a report by The Planetary Society.
  • Some may actually have been space debris.
  • The Gaia spacecraft was once mistaken for a minimoon, and so were rocket stages from the Chang’e 2 and Lunar Prospector missions.
2024 PT5
  • The asteroid was discovered with the help of the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS).
  • It is estimated to be just 33 feet long and is too small to be visible to the naked eye or through typical amateur telescopes.
  • However, the asteroid is within the brightness range of telescopes used by professional astronomers.
  • 2024 PT5 has come to visit from “the Arjuna asteroid belt, a secondary asteroid belt made of space rocks that follow orbits very similar to that of Earth” at an average distance to the Sun of about 150 million kilometres.
  • The asteroid could possibly be a “piece of ejecta from an impact on the moon.
Significance
  • The observations of 2024 PT5 will help scientists expand the knowledge of asteroids that pass close to the Earth and those that sometimes collide with it.
  • Many asteroids contain valuable minerals and water, which companies hope to extract one day and use for purposes such as rocket fuel.
Source- Indian Express

More Related Current Affairs View All

05 May

Key objectives of caste count

'The Union Cabinet has decided that the next Census will include questions on caste to its enumeration of India’s population, for the first time in almost a century. ' T

Read More

05 May

2 new genome-edited rice varieties

'Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan recently released two genome-edited varieties of rice, the first achievement of its kind in the country.' These two varieties, which

Read More

05 Mar

First-ever comprehensive survey of India’s river dolphins

'Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the results of the first-ever comprehensive population estimation of riverine dolphins – Gangetic and Indus dolphins – done in In

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps