They believe that an asteroid that orbits the Earth would be a piece of the Moon

It's called Kamo'oalewa, and it's a near-Earth asteroid.

It is similar to the Moon in some ways.

Kamo'oalewa was discovered in 2016 with Pan-STARRS at the Haleakala Observatory.

It is an unusual object in that its orbit changes over time.

But as it changes,

Its surface is also remarkable.

It reflects light in the same way as the Moon, thanks to the presence of silicates.

That's

, but it's not the only clue,

In 2025 a spaceship will leave that will take a fragment of the asteroid.

While Kamo'oalewa is not the only quasi-satellite, nor the only one in the Apollo group, it is the smallest, closest, and most stable of them.

A new study examines the orbit of the object to understand if it could have been ejected from the Moon. 

Kamo'oalewa is beyond the Hill Sphere of Earth, which is a region of space that dominates the pull of satellites.

Kamo'oalewa is beyond the Hill Sphere of Earth, which is a region of space that

.

The Moon is inside the Hill Sphere, and although its orbit is subject to small perturbations and changes, it is quite stable.

But Kamo'oalewa is outside the sphere, and

.

It is called a quasi-satellite because the Sun exerts more attraction on it than the Earth, indicates

.

a piece of the moon

"Given its Earth-like orbit and its physical resemblance to lunar surface materials, we explored the hypothesis that it could have originated as a fragment of debris from a meteorite impact with the lunar surface," says Dr. scientific document.

Since they can't go back in time and observe the Moon during its long history of bombardments, scientists do the next best thing.

They use computers to simulate events with a wide variety of variable values ​​and see what they find, says

Simulations show that Kamo'oalewa, during close approaches to Earth, experiences tilt jumps that

and then dissipate over thousands of years.

If scientists can prove that Kamo'oalewa is a piece of the Moon, that opens up some intriguing possibilities.

If scientists can prove that Kamo'oalewa is a piece of the Moon, that opens up some intriguing possibilities. 

There is talk of missions to Kamo'oalewa, but they can be modest.

In 2017, a team of graduate research assistants presented a plan to send a small spacecraft to the asteroid,

In a 2019 conference paper, a group of NASA scientists proposed the New Moon Explorer mission.

It would be a little spaceship mission. 

The asteroid Didymos (left) and its moon, Dimorphos (right) (EFE).

Kamo'oalewa is small, maybe

.

But that hasn't stopped China from developing a more ambitious mission of its own.

It's called Tianwen-2, and along with the spacecraft itself, there will be a nano-orbiter and a nano-lander.

The nano-lander will take a sample of the asteroid that will be returned to Earth for analysis.

Tianwen-2 will launch in 2025, indicates

If one or all of these missions are successful, we may finally know if Kamo'oalewa really is

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