";s:4:"text";s:1776:"It will probably fly away again in April On the night of Feb. 15, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne and I … Astronomers say Earth has a new mini-moon, for now. A minor-planet moon is an astronomical object that orbits a minor planet as its natural … The influence of the sun can destabilise moons. An asteroid known as 2020 CD3, only the second asteroid known to orbit Earth, was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey.
Astronomers have spotted an asteroid that has been captured by Earth's gravity, making it a temporary mini-moon. A sequence of radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2 was obtained on the evening of May 29, 2013, by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth, which is … Asteroid 2004 … The closer, the harder it is for a moon to find a stable orbit. A "potentially hazardous asteroid" that whizzed past Earth earlier this month is so large it has its own "moon." It acts as a temporary mini-moon whirling around our planet, and is … An asteroid has been caught in our planet's gravity, but it'll float away soon. Most asteroids are a long way from the sun The stability of moons is influence by the nearness of the sun. The images show the asteroid, which made its closest approach on Jan. 26, 2015 at 8:19 a.m. PST (11:19 a.m. EST) at a distance of about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers, or 3.1 times the distance from Earth to the moon), has its own small moon. Earth has a new temporarily captured object/Possible mini-moon called 2020 CD3.