Tumbling through Earth’s increasingly crowded orbit are about 5,000 satellites, half a million pieces of human-made debris and only one confirmed natural object: the moon. Now, astronomers working out of the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory think they may have discovered a second natural satellite — or at least a temporary one.

Meet 2020 CD3, Earth’s newest possible “minimoon.”

BIG NEWS (thread 1/3). Earth has a new temporarily captured object/Possible mini-moon called 2020 CD3. On the night of Feb. 15, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne and I found a 20th magnitude object. Here are the discovery images. pic.twitter.com/zLkXyGAkZl

— Kacper Wierzchos (@WierzchosKacper) February 26, 2020

>Related articles

The second-largest “mega-tsunami” in history struck Alaska: Landslide triggered a wave nearly 500 meters high

Google begins construction of its massive AI center in India

Agreement between Google and the Pentagon for the use of Artificial Intelligence models in classified missions – What is provided for weapons systems

A minimoon, also known as a temporarily captured object, is a space rock that gets caught in Earth’s orbit for several months or years before shooting off into the distant solar system again (or burning up in our planet’s atmosphere).

Read more: Space