Scientists Capture First-Ever Image of Earth’s Mysterious ‘Second Moon’—What Secrets Does It Hold?
So, it turns out Earth isn’t just moonin’ around with one lunar buddy—we’ve got a shadowy sidekick cruising the cosmic neighborhood every 45 years. Meet Kamo’oalewa, a quirky little space rock with a Hawaiian name and a reputation as the “second moon,” though technically it’s a “quasi satellite.” How’s that for a celestial plot twist? Some brainy researchers even think this tiny wanderer is a piece of our very own Moon, a cosmic souvenir jarred loose millions of years ago. Picture this: a chunk of lunar rock hitching a ride around the Sun alongside our planet, sneaking up on us every few decades like some interplanetary boomerang. Thanks to the Tianwen-2 probe—a high-flying Chinese mission that got up close and personal with Kamo’oalewa—we finally have the clearest glimpse at this elusive traveler. Now, the big question: what secrets is this miniature moon hiding? Could it hold clues to our Moon’s past, or maybe even a splash of water? Either way, it’s the tiniest space rock humanity’s ever gotten so cozy with, and honestly, that’s kinda thrilling. Ready to unravel more lunar mysteries?
Earth’s ‘second moon’ has been pictured for the first time ever to give the clearest look we’ve ever had at the small object in space that passes our planet once every few decades.
It’s called Kamo’oalewa, a name which is Hawaiian in origin since it was first seem by a telescope situated on Hawaii back in 2016, and while it’s actually something called a ‘quasi satellite‘ the moniker of a ‘second moon’ has rather stuck.
That’s in part because some researchers have suggested that this chunk of space rock actually comes from our own Moon, being a piece that was knocked off a very long time ago.
Space reports that between one million and 10 million years ago a major impact might have torn a chunk of something off our moon, and that something could be Kamo’oalewa.
Earth actually has several of these quasi satellites, but Kamo’oalewa is the closest one to our planet and passes by the Earth every 45 years as it orbits the Sun.
This is Kamo’oalewa, a piece of space rock that passes by Earth once every 45 years (China National Space Administration)
Because of the way its orbit works it keeps moving around the Earth as it follows a similar trajectory around the Sun, being closer for half the time and further away the other half.
Observations of this space oddity from a Chinese mission come from the Tianwen-2 probe that was launched last year and has travelled 620 million miles to reach Kamo’oalewa.
It got to within 12 miles of the ‘second moon’ and will spend a year studying it before it makes the attempt to collect a sample from the space rock.
The ‘second moon’ appears to be between 40 and 100 metres in diameter, so it could be the smallest bit of space rock humanity has ever sent a spacecraft to.
If samples can be collected from it then it could help us learn for sure where it came from and if it is indeed something that once was part of our own Moon.
This piece of space rock has an orbit similar to Earth’s, so it follows our planet through space (NASA / JPL-Caltech)
They’ll be hoping to discover what it’s made of and whether it contains any trace of water, as well as a plethora of other features that could tell us more about this thing.
We really don’t know very much about it since it’s so small, was only properly discovered a decade ago and this is the first clear image we’ve managed to take of it.
If it was actually a true moon it’d need to properly orbit Earth, when instead it merely closely follow’s Earth’s own orbit around the Sun in an elliptical pattern.
There is so much unknown about our Solar System, but now we know a little more about one small part of it that follows our planet around the Sun.
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