A near-Earth asteroid known as Kamo`oalewa might be made of a stray chunk of the Moon, scientists have said.
Kamo`oalewa is one of a mysterious and little-understood set of objects called quasi-satellites. It is an asteroid that orbits around the Sun but remains close to the Earth.
As with all objects of that type, Kamo`oalewa is difficult to observe. Though it is relatively close to the Earth – it comes as close as 9 million mile away – it is also very faint, about 4 million times darker than the faintest star humans can see in the sky.
Indeed, Kamo`oalewa can only be seen for a few weeks, every April. And its small size means that scientists can only track it with one of the largest telescopes on Earth.
When it was passing by, however, scientists did manage to examine the patterns in the light that came back from Kamo`oalewa. And what they found suggests that it might have a very familiar origin.
The spectrum of light that came back from the asteroid matched up with rocks that were brought back from the Moon by Nasa’s Apollo missions. As such, it may have originated from the Moon.
Read more: yahoo
