NASA: Near-Earth Asteroid Likely Came from the Moon

Last year, astronomers on the hunt for potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroids spotted something unusual. A space rock, now dubbed 2024 PT5 made several close passes by Earth, not quite orbiting our planet, but hovering nearby for several months. A new study of 2024 PT5 suggests it's no coincidence this asteroid is hanging around in our celestial neighborhood. This object appears to be a piece of the Moon, which was broken off in a cataclysmic impact.

Scientists first detected 2024 PT5 in August 2024 with the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), a robotic telescope that keeps an eye out for dangerous space rocks. From the start, this asteroid looked a bit off. The spectrum of reflected sunlight from 2024 PT5 didn't match any known class of asteroid. In fact, it looked a lot like the Moon.

"We had a general idea that this asteroid may have come ...