Where we all are keeping up with Donald Trump’s victory and Demonetisation in India, it seems that there is a lot that we miss out on space just because we are too focused on what’s happening on earth.
While surfing we stumbled upon an old news that got our attention instantly and we asked, around 50 people if they knew about it already or not. To our surprise, only 2 out of 50 said they heard or read the news.
The news stated that earlier in June 2016, Nasa confirmed that our planet Earth has a second moon. It sounded like a big revelation and we were stunned how many people are still unaware of the fact.
What Is The Full Revelation?
In June 2016 NASA declared that Earth has a second moon that has been orbiting around Earth for nearly a century. Although it is quite different than the one we are used to seeing. This second moon is actually an asteroid and has been discovered in an orbit around the sun. The orbit kept this asteroid as a constant companion of Earth and it will continue to do so for many centuries.
This asteroid is more gravitationally affected by the Sun than Earth and is called 2016 HO3. It is too distant to be considered a true satellite of Earth so, the scientists of NASA refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth. The scientists revealed that there was another asteroid called 2003 YN107, which used to follow a similar orbital pattern ten years back but it has since departed our vicinity.
The second moon or 2016 HO3 is much more locked onto Earth and has been a stable quasi-satellite of Earth for almost a century. The 2016 HO3 was discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid survey telescope which was tilted at eight degrees in Haleakala, Hawaii.
Can We Set Foot On The Second Moon?
There are a lot of objects that are near-Earth companion or are orbiting this planet such as man-made satellites, space stations and lots of junk (small asteroids and more) but, only Moon can be seen easily in starry nights. The man has made a mark on Moon a long ago and now the question is will we be able to conquer the land of this Second Moon too ?
To our disappointment, it is not possible, as the 2016 HO3 is considerably smaller than our Moon with dimensions of 40–100 meters (130–350 ft) across. It is stable around Earth for now and coming centuries but after a certain long course of time, it will depart.
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13 December 2016
Avni S. Singh