2023-04-20 16:02:36
“2023 FW13” is the name of the “quasi-lune detected on March 28 from the PanSTARRS observatory in Hawaii (UNITED STATES). According Futura Sciences et TF1 Infoit is actually a small asteroid about twenty meters in diameter, which follows the Terre during its journey around the Sun.
According to the astronomers, this celestial object is currently more than 10 million kilometers from the blue planet, or 25 times the distance that separates the Earth from the real Moon. Astronomer at the Observatory of the University of Geneva and scientific journalist for our colleagues from Futura, Adrien Coffinet detailed this discovery.
Over 2,000 years of history
According to him, theasteroid was orbiting the Sun when it crossed paths with Earth. This encounter slightly disrupted its orbit. “If we look from the Earth, we actually have the impression that it revolves around us, but it is not the Earth’s gravitation that defines its orbit”, confided Jérémie Vaubaillon, assistant astronomer at the Observatory of Paris, to our colleagues from Figaro Sciences. In other words, the asteroid does orbit around the Soleil while remaining in the vicinity of the Earth, hence the name “quasi-satellite” used by Adrien Coffinet.
With the help of amateur astronomer Tony Dunn, the latter entered the orbital parameters of “2023 FW13” into a simulator. The two researchers then found that the asteroid had been in this vicinity for more than two millennia.
A “springboard” for Mars?
“It seems to be the longest Earth ‘quasi-satellite’ known to date,” Adrien Coffinet told American magazine Sky and Telescope. Normally, these objects follow the Earth for a few centuries at most. According to the French astronomer, “2023 FW13” should therefore continue to defy the norm by remaining in the vicinity of our planet until the year 3,700 of our era.
A teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), planetary scientist Richard Binzel considers that these “quasi-satellites” could serve as a “springboard” in the perspective of a trip to Mars. He believes that spacecraft could access these slowly moving asteroids in just a few months.
1682041372
#quasimoon #Earth #millennia