{"id":113670,"date":"2020-10-01T10:03:22","date_gmt":"2020-10-01T17:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/we-might-have-a-new-mini-moon-soon"},"modified":"2020-10-01T10:03:22","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T17:03:22","slug":"we-might-have-a-new-mini-moon-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/we-might-have-a-new-mini-moon-soon","title":{"rendered":"We might have a new mini-moon soon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/we-might-have-a-new-mini-moon-soon2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Is it a new asteroid mini\u2013moon or a human-made mini-moon? That\u2019s the question about a small object approaching Earth, called 2020 SO. NASA\u2019s Small Body Database predicts the object will captured by Earth\u2019s gravity in October 2020 and temporarily be trapped in orbit.<\/p>\n<p>But a few unusual characteristics of 2020 SO suggest it might not be a small asteroid, like the two previously known temporary mini-moons that have briefly orbited our planet. Instead, this new object might in fact be an old object from Earth\u2014an old second-stage rocket part from the Surveyor 2 lunar lander mission, launched in 1966.<\/p>\n<p>Mini-moons, or TCOs (Temporarily Captured Objects) have probably occurred more over history than we know, but only two have ever been confirmed: 2006 RH120, which hung out in Earth <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/orbit\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">orbit<\/a> from 2006 to 2007, and the one discovered earlier this year, 2020 CD3, in Earth orbit from 2018 to 2020. Those objects were definitely small space rocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it a new asteroid mini\u2013moon or a human-made mini-moon? That\u2019s the question about a small object approaching Earth, called 2020 SO. NASA\u2019s Small Body Database predicts the object will captured by Earth\u2019s gravity in October 2020 and temporarily be trapped in orbit. But a few unusual characteristics of 2020 SO suggest it might not [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}