Earth has other moons -Astronomers
07 Jan FOX news
Maybe Frank should have sang "Fly Me to the Moons." Scientists
studying satellites orbiting the planet have come to an astounding
conclusion: Earth has multiple moons at any given time, the MIT
Technology Review reported. Mikael Granvik, along with colleagues at the
University of Hawaii, first discovered a mysterious body orbiting the
Earth in 2006. The object - or RH120 as it was known - turned out to be
a tiny asteroid just a few meters across. Moreover, it was a natural
satellite just like our moon.
Since then, the researchers have been studying how this "Earth-Moon"
gravitational system captures bodies into its orbit while also modelling
their frequency and duration. The asteroid RH120 for instance was
captured in September 2006 and orbited the planet until June 2007. But
how often do these "temporary moons" actually occur? Quite often, the
astronomers found. "At any given time, there should be at least one
natural Earth satellite of one-meter diameter orbiting the Earth,"
Granvik, Jeremie Vaubaillon and Robert Jedicke wrote in "The Population
of Natural Earth Satellites," a paper published in online physics
journal ArXiv.org. In other words, at this very moment, our planet
likely has a secret moon orbiting us (no word as to whether it's a blue
moon). Such objects typically stay for about 10 months, making three
revolutions around the planet.
Given that these tiny captured orbitals are only a meter or two in
diameter, it may seem a stretch to officially call them "moons" - but
the scientific implications of the discovery are vast.
Outside of assisting private spaceflight and exploring deep space,
the other major thing on NASA's list of things to do is send astronauts
to an asteroid.
"The scienti?c potential of being able to ?rst remotely characterize
a meteoroid and then visit and bring it back to Earth would be
unprecedented," the research team concluded.
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