CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—Planet Earth is saying goodbye to an asteroid that has been orbiting as a “mini moon” for the past two months.
The harmless asteroid will break away on Monday but will return for a brief visit in January.
In January, NASA will use a radar antenna to study the 33-foot asteroid, known as 2024 PT5, which may be a boulder ejected from the moon by an impacting asteroid.
The astrophysicist brothers, Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos from Complutense University of Madrid, have been collaborating with telescopes in the Canary Islands to observe the asteroid’s behavior.
Currently located over 2 million miles away, the asteroid is too small to be seen without a powerful telescope. It will pass by Earth as close as 1.1 million miles in January before continuing its orbit around the sun, not to return until 2055. This is almost five times farther than the moon.
First discovered in August, the asteroid started its orbit around Earth in late September. By its next visit in 2055, it will be moving too fast to remain in Earth’s orbit, according to Raul de la Fuente Marcos.
In January, NASA will track the asteroid for more than a week using the Goldstone solar system radar antenna in California’s Mojave Desert.
Current data indicates that during its 2055 return, the asteroid will once again make a temporary orbit around Earth.
