Earth's new mini-moon, which has been orbiting our planet since 2017, was discovered by astronomers earlier this month. hereandnow
It won’t be around for much longer though, he says, as the mini-moon is leaving Earth’s orbit and “returning to the sun-centered orbit from which it came.”
The mini-moon may be small, but it could potentially become mighty: Christensen says the object has a “fairly elevated risk” — a 3% chance over the next 100 years — of coming into contact with the Earth.“We believe that there's a population of temporarily captured objects that are always coming and going,” he says. “Most of the predicted temporarily captured objects are a meter or smaller.”
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