According to the US CNN broadcast and the New York Times (NYT) on the 20th (local time), astronomers predicted that the asteroid ‘2024 PT5’, which was recently close to Earth, temporarily entered the Earth’s gravitational field for 56.6 days from the 29th to November 25th and orbited. It was observed that it would turn.
Astronomers first discovered the asteroid ‘2024 PT5’ on the 7th of last month at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) support facility ‘Asteroid Impact Alert System’ (ATLAS) Observatory in South Africa. The diameter of this asteroid is estimated to be about 37 feet (about 11 meters).
This asteroid will orbit 4.2 million km away from Earth, about 10 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. However, rather than orbiting the Earth once, it is expected to orbit in a horseshoe shape and leave the Earth’s orbit at a point where the sun’s gravity becomes stronger.
In the world of astronomy, an asteroid that enters the Earth’s gravitational field and orbits the Earth is called a ‘mini moon’. In 2020, the asteroid ‘2020 CD3’ orbited the Earth and then left.
However, astronomers explained that in order for an asteroid to become a mini moon, it must move at a speed and direction suitable for being caught by Earth’s gravity, so it is not a common phenomenon.
For an asteroid to become a mini moon, it must move at a speed of less than 3,600 km per hour and come within 4.5 million km of Earth.
Academic circles estimate that mini-moons that orbit the Earth for a period of several months occur several times within a decade, and mini-moons that orbit the Earth for more than a year appear every 10 to 20 years.
https://n.news.naver.com/article/021/0002661078?sid=104