CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—Planet Earth is parting company with an asteroid that’s been tagging along as a “mini moon” for the past two months.
The harmless space rock will peel away on Monday. But it will zip closer for a quick visit in January.
NASA will use a radar antenna to observe the 33-foot asteroid then. That should deepen scientists’ understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, quite possibly a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid.
The astrophysicist brothers who identified the asteroid’s “mini moon behavior,” Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far….