For thousands of years the only satelite of the Land that humanity has known, has been the Moon. It is huge and has been linked to us for millions of years. But if someone asks you, “How many moons does Earth have?“, the answer is not “just one“.
The satellites they are rocks with a smaller mass than the planet, which are attracted by its gravity, and many of them, like our Moon, can no longer escape.
Only in recent decades, thanks to the greater power of telescopes and other instruments, have been able to discover what is known as mini moons, minisatelliteseither ghost moons.
Earth’s mini moons
Are ghost moons they are usually asteroids that have become trapped in Earth’s gravity. Called ghost moons because due to its small size, sooner or later they end up “running away”.
In 2020, a minimoon called 2020 CD3 was discovered. Was a C-type asteroid with the size of a car, between 1.9 and 3.5 meters long. She had been orbiting the Earth for three years, but finally managed to escape its gravity that same year.
This is an extremely rare phenomenon. Of the more than a million known asteroids, only two have become Earth’s satellites..
In 2006, the minimoon 2006 RH120 it orbited the Earth for 18 months, as discovered by NASA’s Catalina Sky Survey observatory. It was bigger than 2020 CD3, as it reached a diameter of 6 meters.
Other minimoons have been discovered, such as OS 2020but they are not considered so because they turned out to be space junk.
As LiveScience tells, there are also the quasi-satellitesAs the asteroid 3753 Cruithne. quasi-satellites orbit around the sun so similar to Earth that they stick to our planet throughout its 365-day orbit. But they actually revolve around the Sun, not the Earth.
As we see, the Land has been several minimoonsalthough they are invisible to the naked eye. Currently there is none, beyond our faithful companion, the only and true Moon.