National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has found Earth’s second moon last April, which has been here for about a hundred years now. Well, to be precise, this “second moon” is actually an unfortunate asteroid found in an unusual dance with the earth.
The scientists are calling this celestial body “2016 HO3” and it measures just 120 feet in length and 300 feet wide. So is this asteroid a threat to us anywhere in the near future? As it turns out, no.
Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, explains that unlike the moon, the asteroid is not a true satellite of Earth. Rather, 2016 HO3 orbits the sun, but in a way that keeps it constantly looping around the planet. NASA called it a “game of leap frog” with Earth.
Earth’s gravity is just strong enough “so that it never wanders farther away than about 100 times the distance of the moon,” said Chodas.
NASA refers to the asteroid as either a “near-Earth companion” or a “quasi-satellite.” Too far away to be visible to the naked eye, it was spotted in April from the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on the summit of Haleakalā in Hawaii.
The rock is estimated to be between 40 and 100 metres across, roughly making it about half the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt — and only one hundredth the size of the asteroid believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
The scientists safely believe that this “dance” with the two moons and the Earth is to continue for quite some time to come.
[adinserter block=”7″]
As a technology lover you may like our daily important technology news series. It’s a playlist and you can retrieve the total day-wise videos. Please consider subscribing our YouTube channel:
Author: Technology and Beyond
