Last year, astronomers on the hunt for potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroids spotted something unusual. A space rock, now dubbed 2024 PT5 made several close passes by Earth, not quite orbiting our planet,

For a brief, but exciting, time last year, Earth had two moons. A small asteroid lingered close to our planet in its orbit around the Sun, temporarily caught by Earth’s gravity to become a far away mini-moon. A closer look at the space rock reveals a rather familiar origin: Earth’s mini-moon might actually be a broken-off piece of our regular Moon.

Earth's temporary asteroid friend last year was a chunk of its real moon that had been blasted into space thousands of years ago, scientists find.

A near-Earth object was likely ejected into space after an impact thousands of years ago. Now it could contribute new insights to asteroid and lunar science.

The sun’s light exerts a tiny force called “solar radiation pressure” on objects in space. Lightweight human-made debris, like hollow rocket parts, gets pushed around more easily, like a tin can in the wind. Natural objects like asteroids are much denser and less affected.

NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar is closely tracking asteroid 2024 PT5 during its nearest approach to Earth, a distance still five times farther than the Moon. First spotted in August 2024 by the University of Hawaiʻi’s ATLAS telescope,