This asteroid orbits the Sun, left a massive crater on Moon, but without ever hitting it

A team of astronomers, who have been trying to track the origin of the near-Earth asteroid Kamo'oalewa, are now proposing a theory which hints that it was most likely part of the Moon.

The mysterious space rock was first discovered in 2016 and was between 130 and 328 feet in diameter.

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A research team, headed by Tsinghua University astronomer Yifei Jiao, has hinted that the rock had broken from a geological feature of the Moon known as the Giordano Bruno crater. The crater was named after a 16th-century Italian cosmological theorist.

"We have explored the processes for impact-induced lunar fragments migrating into Earth co-orbital space and presented support for Kamo'oalewa's possible origin from the formation of the Giordano Bruno crater a few million years ago," wrote the researchers, in theirpaperwhich was published in the journalNature Astronomy.

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"This would directly link a specific asteroid in space to its source crater on the Moon and suggests the existence of more small asteroids composed of lunar material yet to be discovered in near-Earth space," the researchers added.

For years, astronomers have remained fascinated by the space rock because it is orbiting the Sun in an Earth-like orbit and is likely to remain stable there for millions of years.

Space rock matches Moon's composition

According to spectrum analysis, the rock also perfectly matches the composition of the Moon.

University of Arizona planetary sciences professor Renu Malhotra, who is also a coauthor of another paperwhich also suggeststhat the chunk once belonged to the moon, while speaking to Astronomy, said, "We looked at Kamo’oalewa’s spectrum only because it was in an unusual orbit. If it had been a typical near-Earth asteroid, no one would have thought to find its spectrum and we wouldn’t have known Kamo’oalewa could be a lunar fragment."

With the use of computer models to simulate how Kamo’oalewa would have impactedthe Moon's surface, Jiao and his colleaguesreached the conclusionthat it would have created a crater larger than 12 miles.

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The Giordano crater - which is spread across 13.6 miles - appeared like the best candidate to the scientists.

The lack of debris further suggested that the space rock is somewhere around ten and 100 million years old, which makes it relatively younger than the Moon.

"It is clear that the largest, youngest craters are more probable sources, as they produce more escaping fragments thatstillremain in space or the Earth co-orbital region," wrote Jiao and his team, adding that Giordano Bruno "is the only possible source crater satisfying the criterion."