Moon babies from asteroid collisions mean Earth has 7 moons at all times

Last year, Earth had a mini moon for a few weeks, and astronomers were all excited about it. Now a study has established that our planet has at least six such mini moons at any given time. A team os scientists from the US, Italy, Germany, Finland, and Sweden says that these cosmic objects are pieces of our actual moon which came apart following asteroid collisions. They are only around six feet in diameter and caught in the Earth's gravitational field. The authors noted that when the debris from the Moon was released from asteroid impacts, the larger chunks floated away. However, the smaller ones were pulled in and are in a somewhat stable orbit around Earth. These broken moon pieces, known as "lunar ejecta," orbit our planet for years before escaping. These temporarily bound objects (TBOs) then get caught in the Sun's gravity and start revolving around it. Some of them also crash into Earth or the Moon. More debris is released from the Moon and then undergoes the same process, as some of it ends up being Earth's new moons. Also Read: Scientists can't figure out why glaciers in world's most dangerous region are growing

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Earth's mini moons

Robert Jedicke, a researcher at the University of Hawaii, described it like a "square dance, where partners change regularly and sometimes leave the dance floor for a while." The study published in Icarus also cancels out scientific belief that every new mini moon that comes near Earth travels from the solar system's asteroid belt. "Given that 18 per cent of TBOs can also be classified as minimoons, our nominal results suggest that there should be about 6.5 minimoons larger than 1 m diameter in the [Earth-Moon system] at any time," the researchers wrote in their new report. To understand more about mini moons, scientists studied two such objects named Kamo'oalewa and 2024 PT5. Both the mini moons made headlines last year when they were spotted orbiting Earth. Also Read: New world Sedna discovered in solar system. What this means for Planet Nine

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Mini moons discovered orbiting Earth

These cosmic creatures were found to have the same properties as the Moon. Kamo'oalewa, discovered in 2016 by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii, was large, measuring between 131 to 328 feet in diameter. It reflected light in the same way as the moon's surface composition. It also had the same composition of lunar rocks, which are rich in silicates. Mini moon 2024 PT5 also exhibited the same characteristics, Jedicke told Space.com. Asteroid 2024 PT5 was discovered on Aug 7, 2024. It was spotted by Sutherland, the South Africa telescope of the University of Hawaii’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). As it came near Earth, it got caught in its gravity at a distance of about nine times the Moon is from Earth. The asteroid remained Earth's mini-moon from Sep 29 to Nov 25 in 2024. It revisited us this year and was at its closest point to our planet in January 2025, at which time scientists really dug into it to know about its history.