Earth appears to have temporary ‘mini-moon’

The Earth appears to have a temporary ‘mini-moon’. A suspected asteroid several meters in diameter has been stuck in orbit for three years. It seems that the object will again escape the gravity of our planet within two months.

When you hear about an object about the size of a car, you might think it’s the Tesla Roadster that SpaceX shot into the sky a few years ago with a Falcon Heavy, but it’s been over Mars for a while now. In addition, no link to an artificial object has been found, reports the Minor Planet Center. So it is probably an asteroid. It’s called 2020 CD3.

Astronomer Kacper Wierzchos discovered the object. It has an elliptical orbit well around the Earth and flies outside the orbit of the Moon. The asteroid has probably been stuck in orbit for about three years, although predictions seem to indicate that it will escape in April.

It is not the first time that Earth has a temporary ‘mini-moon’; this already happened in 2006. The suspected asteroid is between 1.9 and 3.5 meters in diameter. The moon that permanently revolves around the Earth has a diameter of 3474.2 km.

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