Every April for the next several hundred years , a minuscule asteroid is visible to a select few telescopes on Earth . That asteroid is Kamoʻoalewa , a space rock-and-roll that a squad of astronomers says is likely an ancient fragment of our Moon .
The astronomers late observe the highly wispy Kamoʻoalewa through the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona and study the style light excogitate off it . They found that the asteroid ’s spectra check lunar rock from NASA ’s Apollo foreign mission , a strong indicator that the rock is actually Moon rock . Their results arepublishedtoday in Communications Earth & Environment .
“ We looked at the apparitional behavior of asteroids that the scientific community has read before , and we could n’t rule a good match in any known library , ” said Benjamin Sharkey , lead author of the newspaper and an astronomer at the University of Arizona , in an email to Gizmodo . “ We then asked ourselves if any forcible mental process not related to material composition could make up live asteroid with our data . We could n’t think of anything that gibe . Then , when we looked at lunar material , we find that they provided a much more verbatim friction match to our observations . ”
An artist’s impression of the near-Earth object Kamoʻoalewa.
Kamoʻoalewa is a Hawaiian word that alludes to the object’soscillating visibility in the sky ; in April you see it , and then you do n’t . The asteroid does n’t inhabit the solar system ’s main asteroid knock between Mars and Jupiter , as most do . or else , this finical 200 - invertebrate foot physical object is a quasi - satellite , think it ’s a near - Earth asteroid that does orbit the Sun but is close to Earth than other asteroids . ( In this case , close means about 9 million miles from our planet ; the Moon isabout 250,000 milesaway at its farthest . )
The rock was originally discovered in 2016 by the PanSTARRS telescope in Hawaii . Sharkey ’s squad pass the next three year investigating Kamo’oalewa ’s origins , with some hiatus due to telescope closures get by the covid-19 pandemic . They took their concluding data this springtime , some “ much needed follow - up observations , ” Sharkey said in a University of Arizonanews release , add together that the asteroid “ is easier to explicate with the Moon than other theme . ”
“ Asteroids are made of mineral that have unique spectral signature when you look in the infrared light , ” said co - author Vishnu Reddy , an uranologist at the University of Arizona , in an email to Gizmodo . “ When we first looked at Kamoʻoalewa , we detected a mineral called pyroxene which is relatively vernacular . What was interesting was this mineral pyroxene was altered in a fashion that is very standardized to what we seen on the Moon . That commit me thinking that we should look at the Apollo samples . ”
The squad compare the asteroid ’s reflected light with the way other near - Earth asteroids reflect lighting , and the Apollo rock’n’roll were the nigh match . Besides the light reflectance datum , the squad said there were other characteristic of Kamoʻoalewa that set it aside , like its location in blank space .
“ It is very unconvincing that a garden - potpourri near - Earth asteroid would impromptu move into a quasi - satellite domain like Kamoʻoalewa ’s , ” say carbon monoxide gas - source Renu Malhotra , a world-wide scientist at the University of Arizona , in the release . Malhotra ’s lab is individually working to determine the asteroid ’s parentage ( that is , when and how exactly it broke aside from the Moon ) .
Malhotra added that Kamoʻoalewa ’s current orbit will last . Her team estimates the entered its current orbit around 500 years ago and has about 300 class go forth there . So if we ’re going to confirm that the rock is a slice of the Moon , we ’ve go three centuries to do it .
Unlike this nearby careen , most asteroid are thought to have spring in the very early years of the solar system , when the planets were meld . ANASA mission phone Lucylaunched last calendar month on a journey to examine a radical of them phone the Trojans , in an sweat to take more about what weather condition were like billions of years ago .
More : New Moon Rocks Brought to Earth Have scientist Wondering How They Melted
moonsNear - Earth objective
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