Nation & World News
Video: New asteroid found orbiting Earth
Astronomers have found a new object that they say has been orbiting Earth for a century or so.
The asteroid about 40 to 100 meters in diameter, "behaves as Earth's quasi-satellite," Sky and Telescope magazine reported. Known as 2016 HO3, it was discovered April 27 via telescope in Hawaii.
The asteroid "loops around our planet, but never ventures very far away as we go around the sun," Paul Chodas of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory told Sky and Telescope. "In effect, this small asteroid is caught in a little dance with Earth."
It “doesn’t qualify as a mini-moon of Earth” because our planet’s gravity is too weak to bring it closer, Chodas said.
Read more at Sky and Telescope.
