New research indicates that this particular rocky object comes from the Giordano Bruno crater on the Moon, launched into space following a violent impact.
Kamo’oalewadiscovered in 2016is a small asteroid, measuring between 40 hey 100 meters Of diameter and completes one rotation on itself every 28 minutes. It follows an elliptical orbit around the Sun, parallel to that of the Earth, and behaves in such a way that it almost seems like a satellite of our planet, despite being independent of its gravity.
The simulations recently published on Nature Astronomy they clarified that the origin of Kamo’oalewa it is to be found in an impact event on the Moon, precisely in the crater Giordano Bruno, one of the youngest and most notable craters on our satellite. Spectroscopic studies confirm that the composition of Kamo’oalewa it is surprisingly similar to that of lunar rocks, much more than that of common asteroids.
Kamo’oalewa: the discovery and future implications
These discoveries not only solve a long-standing puzzle regarding our “quasi-Moon,” but also open up new avenues for future research. To exampleChina’s Tianwen-2 mission, scheduled for 2025aims to bring back samples of Kamo’oalewa on the Earth. This could not only definitively confirm its lunar origins, but also offer an unprecedented glimpse beneath the surface of the moon moon.
Research has revealed that the event that created the Giordano Bruno crater may have hurled up to 400 fragments the size of Kamo’oalewa in the space. These fragmentsfollowing stable, near-Earth trajectories, could still be somewhere near us, waiting to be discovered.
This discovery could not only enrich our understanding of lunar geology but also improve our ability to to monitor and predict the trajectories of objects close to the Earth.
Have you ever thought about how amazing it is that pieces of the Moon could end up orbiting close to the Earth? Do you think future missions could reveal more secrets of our universe?
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