Illustration: NASA
Their analysis seems convincing, said Andrew Rivkin, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory who studies asteroid composition and was not involved in the paper. “We’re not going to go out and grab the pieces like NASA did with Bennu, but this is probably as close to definitive as we know,” he says. Rivkin emphasizes that Kamooarewa is a rare object. Of the approximately 80,000 meteorites collected on Earth, only a small percentage have come from the Moon, and of the 1,382 meteorites observed and recorded by people, none have come from the Moon. Ta.
Researchers have found that Kamooarewa, like other objects in such orbits, will probably hang around for millions of years, rather than decades. However, due to the classical three-body problem, its orbit is not stable. In this problem, the chaotic gravitational influences of three celestial bodies – the Earth, the Sun, and Kamoarewa – are eventually forced out and fly away. Away.
Their astronomical investigations continue, including the study of lunar craters that have remained essentially undisturbed for many years. Small changes in the initial conditions of the model, such as the size of the asteroid that struck the moon, the location at which it hit the moon, and the angle at which it hit the moon, have a dramatic effect on the trajectory of the ejected moon rock. They speculate that a kilometer-sized asteroid caused that fatal impact, and they can speculate about that impact as well. “Based on the conditions that are likely to generate this type of orbit coming from the Moon, it would require craters that are millions of years old and tens of kilometers in size,” Castro said.・Mr. Cisneros says. He said it most likely hit the moon’s backside, and efforts are now underway to determine the exact location of the crater where Kamooarewa launched.
The origins of Kamoo-Arewa’s moon also have implications for potentially dangerous Earth-limited asteroids that NASA and other organizations are exploring in the sky. That means people need to consider not only rocks thrown from the asteroid belt, but also orbits originating from the moon. NASA is studying asteroids larger than 140 meters in diameter, similar to the one that the DART spacecraft hit, to test deflection techniques. Malhotra said that although near-Earth objects from ancient moon impacts are likely less than 100 meters wide, they are still known as “city killers” and could cause widespread destruction if they hit Earth. It is said that there is enough danger to cause it.
That probably won’t be the fate of Kamoo Alewa, but Malhotra and Castro Cisneros’ research suggests there are probably others out there like it.
