Ancient fragment of the Moon: What “testifies” the small asteroid that follows the Earth like a satellite |

A small asteroid close to Earth, which has the Hawaiian name-linguist Kamo’oalewa and is a small crescent of our planet, may be an ancient fragment of the Moon, according to astronomers.

If this is indeed the case, it remains unknown how this rock was cut off from the moon. One possible explanation is that it was launched into space after another body hit the Moon. So far no other asteroids of lunar origin have been found.

Kamo’oalewa (a name that refers to the creation myths of the people of Hawaii) belongs to the category of asteroids, which, while in orbit around the Sun, remain relatively close to Earth. He was discovered by the PanSTARRS telescope in Hawaii in 2016 and since then few things have become possible for him to become known.

It has an estimated diameter of 50 to 65 meters and approaches the Earth at a distance of about 14.4 million kilometers. Due to its orbit, it can be observed from our planet for only a few weeks each April and only by a large telescope, as it is about four million times fainter than the faintest star that the human eye can see in the dark sky.

The astronomers, led by Ben Sackley of the University of Arizona, who published the paper in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment, analyzed the light reflected by Kamo’oalewa and concluded that it “testifies” to a chemical composition very similar to that of the rocks of the Moon, which were brought to Earth by NASA’s “Apollo” missions.