JUANA SUMMERS, MODERATOR:

Earth has a new visitor in space. It is an asteroid called 2024 PT5.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Catchy. As the asteroid whizzed past on its way around the sun, it was deflected by Earth’s gravity, and the space rock and Earth are now in a fleeting gravitational dance.

SUMMERS: Scientists discovered the space rock last month using a telescope in South Africa. That telescope is part of the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System. And while that name sounds pretty dire, there’s no need to worry. This asteroid is not on a collision course with Earth.

SHAPIRO: This month, scientists wrote in the American Astronomical Society’s journal Research Notes that the asteroid is 33 feet long – about the size of a bus. And sorry, amateur astronomers – it will be too small and too dim to see with amateur telescopes.

SUMMERS: And while the space chunk has been nicknamed a “minimoon,” which describes a temporary arc around Earth, there’s some disagreement about whether it really lives up to that title, because it won’t completely orbit our planet before setting off again in the coming months to continue its journey around the sun.

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