DailyDirt: That's No Moon, And It's Not A Space Station, Either
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
The Earth's moon is the most well-known planetary satellite because we see it almost every night. But the Earth has a few more natural satellites that aren't technically moons. There are a bunch of near-Earth objects (NEOs) that are in resonance with the Earth around the Sun. Several quasi-satellites and trojans dance around our planet in space -- and these objects could be potential landing sites for probes someday (or for asteroid mining operations). They're just not moons (or dwarf moons or whatever you want to nickname them), but maybe they'll be space stations.- The Earth has natural satellites other than the moon -- such as 3753 Cruithne. This quasi-orbital satellite has a "horseshoe" orbit that orbits the Sun in about a year, but takes 800 years to complete its messy trajectory around the Earth. [url]
- 3753 Cruithne can't be seen with the naked eye because it's too small and distant. You'll need at least a 12.5" telescope to see it, and even more powerful telescopes to see some of Earth's other natural satellites like 2010 TK7, 2006 RH120 (well, not anymore) and J002E3 (which might not be a natural satellite, but debris from Apollo 12). [url]
- The first known Earth Trojan asteroid is named 2010 TK7. It has an orbit around a Lagrange point (the Sun-Earth L4 Lagrangian point), and it never gets closer to us than 12.4 million miles. [url]
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: 2010 tk7, 3753 cruithne, apollo 12, astronomy, earth trojans, lunar, moon, near earth objects, neos, quasi-satellites, satellites, space
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
And don't get it near a Windows computer, it'll auto install...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGgmmX-dzgU
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Qi has clearly answered this question.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]