The smallest asteroid orbiting the Earth, like a ‘quasi-satellite’, may be a lost piece of the moon. It is called Kamo`oalewa, which refers to the celestial bodies oscillating in a Hawaiian candle, 40 meters in diameter and may have been separated from the moon following the violent impact of our satellite by an asteroid. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment, are the result of research led by the University of Arizona.
Discovered in 2016 by the Pan-STARRS laboratory in Hawaii, the asteroid is the smallest, closest and most stable of the Earth’s ‘quasi-satellites’ orbiting both our planet and the sun simultaneously.
Due to its orbit, Kamo`oalewa can only be seen from Earth in April, and with great difficulty, its luminosity is 4 million times fainter than the faint star visible to the human eye in the dark sky. To study it, researchers have launched the Large Telescope (Lbt) in Arizona, one of the most powerful telescopes in the world, and have made significant contributions with the Italian National Institute of Astronomy (Inaf).
Thanks to this instrument, the spectrum of light reflected from the asteroid’s surface could be observed, and based on the collected data, the composition of Kamo`oalewa was found to be incredibly similar to lunar rock samples. Earth by missions. Apollo. To confirm this, researchers studied its orbit to reconstruct the evolution of matter: all data suggest that Kamo`oalewa may have formed about 500 years ago and that the most realistic hypothesis, but not verifiable moment, is that it was created. By an asteroid impact with the Moon.
In 2019, the Chinese space agency CNSA announced that it would launch a robotic mission with the aim of capturing a model to reach Kamolova and bring it back to Earth in 2024. The mission called ZhengHe should proceed towards the second ambitious goal: to collect a portion of the comet.
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