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Astronomers have spotted a quasi-moon near Earth – and the small space rock has likely been hanging out near our planet unseen by telescopes for about 60 years, according to new research.
The newly discovered celestial object, named 2025 PN7, is a type of near-Earth asteroid that orbits the sun but sticks close to our planet. Like our world, 2025 PN7 takes one year to complete an orbit around the sun.
Quasi-moons differ from temporary mini-moons that occasionally orbit Earth such as 2024 PT5 which circled the planet for two months in 2024 and could be an ancient fragment that was blasted off of our primary moon.
The newly found 2025 PN7 is just one of a handful of known quasi-moons with orbits near our planet, including Kayo’ealewa which is also thought to be an ancient lunar fragment. Kamo’oalewa is one of the destinations of China’s Tianwen-2 mission launched in May, which aims to collect and return samples from the space rock in 2027.
The Pan-STARRS observatory located on the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii captured observations of 2025 PN7 on August 29. Archival data revealed that the object has been in an Earth-like orbit for decades.
The quasi-moon managed to escape the notice of astronomers for so long because it is small and faint, said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, a researcher on the faculty of mathematical sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid who recently authored a paper about the space rock. The paper was published on September 2 in the journal Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society which is for timely non-peer-reviewed astronomical observations.
The space rock swings within 186,000 miles (299,337 kilometers) of us during its closest pass of our planet, de la Fuente Marcos said. For reference, 2025 PN7 is 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) away from Earth on average, according to NASA.
“It can only be detected by currently available telescopes when it gets close to our planet as it did this summer,” de la Fuente Marcos explained. “Its visibility windows are few and far between. It is a challenging object.”
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