Possibility of Earth Capturing another moon

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SpaceXFanMobius57

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What would it take for Earth to suddenly get a new moon from capturing an asteroid? I suppose it would take the right circumstances so that it would not blow right past us or slam into us. I started thinking about this while at the bookstore today while reading a book on the sol system/moon section. I noticed how mars and so many of the other planets have captured asteroid for moons. Why does the earth now have some Phoebus like moons as well? Perhaps our big moon has something to do with it.

Asteroids in orbit of the earth would make an easy and fun target for manned exploration.

Though, on further though it may be bad to have mooneroids. The mooneroids of Mars for example are not in stable orbits and will eventually spiral into the planet. Any rock thats captured today would probably not stay stable and eventually crash into us, or spiral away.
 
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kelvinzero

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btw, you might find this interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruithne

"It has been called "Earth's second moon", although it is only a quasi-satellite."

Does anyone know what sort of asteroid this is expected to be? Is it likely to contain carbon or hydrogen?
 
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CalliArcale

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Cruithne isn't really a satellite of the Earth. It's sometimes called a quasi-satellite, because from our perspective, it seems to make sort of a kidney-bean shaped orbit around us. But it doesn't really. It's orbiting the Sun, and although Earth's gravity does influence it somewhat, mostly the kidney-bean effect is just an optical illusion, much like epicycles (the little loops planets appear to make in the sky over time). There are several other quasi-satellites related to the Earth in gravitational resonances similar to Cruithne's. I couldn't find any information on Cruithne's composition, though.

Earth certainly can capture satellites, although the Moon's presence might make it difficult to keep them. It's a very large satellite for a relatively small planet, so it exerts considerable influence in the Earth-Moon system. A captured asteroid might orbit the Earth for a little while and then get flung out after an encounter with the Moon. Alternately, a captured asteroid might settle into an Earth-Moon lagrange point. L4 and L5 (co-orbital with the Moon) would be stable over long periods, and though searches haven't turned up any actual objects there, there does appear to be a greater concentration of interplanetary dust at those points.

Earth *did* capture a satellite recently, by the way. In 2002, an asteroid hunter name Bill Yeoung spotted an object that was moving surprisingly quickly, suggesting it was quite near the Earth. Before long, he'd concluded something startling -- it had to be orbiting the Earth. He reported his observations, the object was cataloged as J002E3, and other astronomers started looking at this new moon. It was a strange orbit, though, and one which could not have lasted very long -- calculations showed that it had to have either been placed into that orbit deliberately (a spacecraft, though it was rather large for such a thing) or captured naturally sometime in the previous few years. Nothing had been launched into an orbit like that recently, so it had to have been captured.

Its size was a bit of a concern. It appeared to be oblong, tumbling end-over-end (fairly common, actually -- the much larger 433 Eros rotates the same way), and big enough to cause serious damage -- it was very bright, which meant that it was either small and shiny or big and dull. So attention turned to its composition. Astronomers studied the object's spectra and found that it was actually shiny, which meant it was not very big. In fact, it was covered in titanium dioxide, a brilliantly white material. This gave them enough information to make a pretty good estimate of its actual size (which you can calculate if you know its reflectivity, its apparent brightness from Earth, and its distance from Earth, and if you make certain assumptions about its shape). But it was also puzzling; titanium dioxide is not very common in the solar system. But it is very commonly found in certain places on Earth -- paint factories. Titanium dioxide is a very popular white pigment.

That got the scientists thinking -- what if this is artificial? Meanwhile, people had been working on the object's orbit. Backtracking, they calculated that it had been orbiting the Earth once before. It had escaped from the Earth's gravity in 1971, the last time it had an opportunity to pass through a gravitational "keyhole" (one of the Lagrange points). And if you assumed the object was cylindrical and then ran the size calculations again, its brightness profile was perfectly consistent with an S-IVB, the third stage of a Saturn V rocket. The Apollo 12 mission had flown in 1969, but the S-IVB didn't have quite enough oomph to actually leave the Earth-Moon system. Instead, it flew past the Moon and settled into a highly elliptical Earth orbit. Astronomers lost track of it in 1970. Now it seems that they've found it again. ;-)

. . . for a while, anyway. After finding it again, they lost it again; the object has disappeared once more. Calculations expected it to depart the Earth system in 2003, so this is actually not surprising. It's far too small to be usefully tracked while it orbits the Sun. It's expected to come back again in 2032.

One upshot of working out its identity is that astronomers are no longer worried about it as an impact hazard. Given that it is hollow, it will not survive reentry. If it were rock, that would be another story, but it's not. Just a big chunk of space junk. ;-)

The S-IVBs of Apollos 8-11 are also out there, orbiting the Sun. They, too, might come back some day. ;-)

Here's an animation showing the capture of J2002E3.
 
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silylene

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It would be easier for the earth to capture one member of a passing binary asteroid. And there are a surprising number of binary asteroids. (However, none are known that pass close enough by)
 
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drwayne

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One of the Ascent modules in also in heliocentric orbit.

Wayne
 
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SpaceXFanMobius57

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Hmm, interesting =) I like it when old spacecraft come back from seep space.
 
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kelvinzero

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Hey, does this mean we havent cleared our orbital path, and will have to be demoted from planet? ;)

I was thinking Cruithne would be interesting to visit, but then I noticed it doesnt come that dramatically closer than phobos (mars). The only solid advantage could be the yearly launch windows.
 
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SpaceXFanMobius57

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kelvinzero":q8u3zxol said:
Hey, does this mean we havent cleared our orbital path, and will have to be demoted from planet? ;)

=o Oh no! We must force cuthrine to impact us immediately or we will loose our status!! :p
 
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