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Space is vast and lonely. It is perfectly understandable, then, that a small rock would decide to be labeled with the Earth and moon as it orbits the sun each year.

The 165-foot-long rock in question was discovered by Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid-hunting telescope in 2016. Hawaiian name for this eccentric being, (469219) Kamoʻoalewameans “swinging celestial body”. As this shy body orbits the Earth repeatedly, it can’t come closer than 9 million miles, which is 38 times farther from the Moon. It travels as far as 25 million miles before returning for a closer encounter.

Calculations of the orbital waltz show that it is starting to follow our planet relatively steadily. about a century agoand will continue to orbit the Earth for the next few centuries. But where did Kamoʻoalewa come from? It is difficult to examine the object with telescopes due to its tiny size and tendency to hide in the shadows.

But in an article published Thursday Communication World and Environment, a team of scientists reported that they may have solved the mystery. By observing Kamoʻoalewa during the brief moments when it was illuminated by the sun, astronomers discovered that it appeared to be made of the same type of frozen igneous matter found on the lunar surface.

“My first reaction to the observations in 2019 was that I probably made a mistake,” he said. Benjamin Shark, a graduate student at the University of Arizona and lead author of the study.

Kamoʻoalewa was expected to consist of minerals typically found in asteroids. But additional observations made this spring made it clear that “the data doesn’t care what we think,” Mr. Kamoʻoalewa did indeed look like an extremely small version of the moon. “I was both excited and confused,” he said after making this discovery.

Based on its orbit and composition, Kamoʻoalewa may be part of the moon that was cut off by a meteor strike in the past.

Kamoʻoalewa may sound like a miniature moon, but it’s not. Unlike the moon, which is gravitationally bound to the Earth, Kamoʻoalewa is gravitationally bound to the sun. If you suddenly destroyed Earth, Kamoʻoalewa would continue to orbit our star. this is what is known as semi satellite. Astronomers know that there are four more remaining around Earth, but Kamoʻoalewa has the most stable orbit.

In April 2017, Kamoʻoalewa was brightly lit when Earth was halfway between the satellite and the sun. Astronomers looked at it with two telescopes in Arizona (the Large Binocular Telescope and the Lowell Discovery Telescope) and used the reflected light to identify its minerals. They saw many silicates, minerals found in rocky bodies throughout the solar system – and follow-up observations confirmed that Kamoʻoalewa’s silicates were very similar to those found on the moon.

This may have been a coincidence, and so the study’s authors suggested other possible origin stories: Kamoʻoalewa could be a captured asteroid with a lunar-like composition, or a fragment of an asteroid being ripped apart by the gravity of the Earth-moon system.

However, the team’s data “provides further support for lunar origin,” he said. hannah sergeantA planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida was not involved in the study.

This quasi-satellite may not be alone: ​​The orbits of three other near-Earth objects are similar enough to those of Kamoʻoalewa to suggest that they may all have come from the same catastrophic event. But at the moment, “there isn’t enough evidence yet to confidently state how these objects came to be,” said Dr. sargeant

“The only way to be sure is to send a spacecraft to this tiny body,” he said. Paul ByrneA planetary scientist at the University of Washington in St. Louis, who was not involved in the study. As are, China’s space agency plans to descend upon it and collect samples to return to Earth this decade later.

Dr. “Until then, we were left with the possibility of being accompanied by the remnants of a collision that pierced a hole in the moon during our journey through space,” Byrne said. “And that’s pretty cool.”