The recently-discovered near-Earth asteroid called 2024 PT5 will become Earth’s mini-moon from September 29 until November 25, 2024.
2024 PT5 will experience a temporarily captured flyby in 2024, from September 29 until November 25. Image credit: University of Colorado.
“Earth can regularly capture asteroids from the near-Earth object (NEO) population and pull them into orbit, making them mini-moons,” Universidad Complutense de Madrid researchers Dr. Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Dr. Raúl de la Fuente Marcos wrote in their paper.
“Sometimes, these temporary captures do not complete one revolution before dropping out of orbit and returning to their regular heliocentric trajectories.”
“Temporarily captured flybys never complete one revolution around Earth, while temporarily captured orbiters complete one or more.”
“Examples of the latter were 2006 RH120 that remained gravitationally bound to Earth from July 2006 to July 2007 and 2020 CD3 that escaped early in May 2020 after being bound to Earth for several years.”
“As for the temporarily captured flybys, two examples are known: 1991 VG was briefly captured in 1992 February and 2022 NX1 was a short-lived mini-moon of Earth in 1981, 2022, and it will return as such in 2051.”
2024 PT5 was discovered on August 7, 2024 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System in Sutherland, South Africa.
This NEO is around 10 m (33 feet) across and follows a path that resembles that of 2022 NX1.
The team’s calculations show that 2024 PT5 will become a mini-moon of Earth on September 29, 2024, to return to a heliocentric path 56.6 days later, on November 25.
“2024 PT5 is currently following a horseshoe path and that its geocentric energy will remain negative for 56.6 days due to a temporarily captured flyby,” the scientists wrote.
“After completing the mini-moon episode, it will approach Earth at 1 km (0.62 miles) per second, reaching a minimum distance of 0.012 AU on January 9, 2025, leaving the neighborhood of Earth shortly afterwards, until its next return in 2055.”
“Differences in the evolution of the control orbits appear beyond 60 years into the past, but also after 30 years into the future; close encounters with the Earth-Moon system are the cause: in 1960 and 2055, respectively.”
The team’s paper was published the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.
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Carlos de la Fuente Marcos & Raúl de la Fuente Marcos. 2024. A Two-month Mini-moon: 2024 PT5 Captured by Earth from September to November. Res. Notes AAS 8 (9): 224; doi: 10.3847/2515-5172/ad781f