Unusual quasi-asteroid orbiting Earth may turn out to be a splinter of the Moon

An asteroid with a difficult to pronounce name Kamoaleva has a rather strange orbit, which makes it practically a mini-moon. Scientists became interested in this object, and the observations made showed that the object may be a fragment of the moon. It is about this object and its origin that will be discussed in this material.

New satellite and its origin

This quasi-asteroid was first discovered back in 2016, and it is quite compact in size. So the asteroid is 40 meters wide and rotates every 28 minutes.

This object has a rather strange orbit around our planet, which is about 13.6 times farther than the orbit of the Moon. At the same time, Kamoaleva is either ahead of our planet in orbit, or lagging behind it. All this allows us to consider this asteroid a quasi-satellite of the Earth.

Despite the fact that the object is quite close to the Earth, there are great difficulties in observing it. And the thing is that the object is very small and at the same time can be recorded by telescopes for only a couple of weeks in April.

Therefore, scientists, having waited for the "observation windows", decided to better study the object through the use of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), as well as the Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT).

During the study, astronomers measured the reflected light spectrum. The point is that different materials both reflect and absorb different wavelengths. And if you carefully study the reflected light from an object, you can fairly accurately determine what this asteroid consists of.

So the quasi-satellite studied with the help of telescopes mainly consists of so-called silicates. According to astronomers, this composition did not match any previously known asteroid that approached the Earth. And the closest object in composition turned out to be our Moon.

This prompted the idea that Kamoaleva is part of the moon. A plus for this hypothesis is the rather strange orbit of the object. After all, as astronomers said, there is a negligible probability that an asteroid approaching the Earth will spontaneously move into a quasi-satellite orbit like Kamoalev's.

In addition, scientists have also found out that this object will stay in such an orbit for only 300 years, and then go to free "floating" in the solar system. And the quasi-satellite got into this orbit only 500 years ago.

Scientists will continue to study the object, and what else they will be able to establish is anyone's guess.

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