Earth bids farewell to ‘mini moon’ that is possibly a chunk of our actual moon

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Planet Earth is losing its mini moon. In other words, Earth is parting company with an asteroid that’s been tagging along for the past two months.

The harmless space rock will peel away on Monday, overcome by the stronger tug of the sun’s gravity. But it will zip closer for a quick visit in January.

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NASA will use a radar antenna to observe the 33-foot (10-meter) 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.

While not technically a moon — NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth’s gravity and fully in orbit — it’s “an interesting object” worthy of study.

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.

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