Earth has captured a second moon, says NASA

[Dryson]

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/earth-has-captured-second-moon-says-nasa

Mini Moon orbiting Earth along with the Moon - I think that while we have the chance with 2016 HO3 that tracking equipment, a solar powered beacon and nuclear back up generator along with Cube Sat Equipment should be sent to 2016 HO3 so that when it leaves the orbit of the Earth it can be used to further explore space without the cost of maintaining it as a satellite. I also suggest landing some small rocket thrusters on it that would allow it to be controlled slightly so that its eradict movement through space would peak attention as well as allowing mining companies to build a future of how to capture small asteroids for mining purposes.
If the asteroid is large enough we should also see into landing humans on it to achieve the first asteroid landing in human history.

 

[RAMA]

How....pointless...

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

What happened to Cruithne?

 

[Trekker4747]

From my understanding it's not a moon to Earth and is just an asteroid that orbits the sun. It just so happens it has highly irregular, wide and elliptical orbit and it's speed changes depending on how close to or far away from the sun and Earth it is that it appears to orbit the Earth from our perspective.

So it's being called a "quasi-satellite." It's a little far out and it's technically orbiting the sun and not us but Earth is having an impact on it.

 

[Dryson]

The asteroid named Toutatis is no bigger than a Smart Car so landing humans on it would be near impossible but capturing it would be the first test of systems designed to capture asteroids and then harvest them. Obviously Toutatis is there for the reason of being captured by Earth to be used for our purpose and therefore should be.

Might even be a good time to develop a new type of satellite that would deploy similar to an asteroid capturing system but instead of capturing the asteroid the system would envelope the asteroid and then use the momentum as the main propulsion of the satellite.

http://www.livescience.com/33641-earth-moons-theorists.html

 

[Dryson]

What happened to Cruithne?

Cruithne should be used to land rovers on to explore the asteroid and return samples from for study.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

What are you on about now? 4179 Toutatis has a mean radius of over 2.5 km, an estimated mass of 50 billion metric tons, and as its aphelion is 4.1 AU, it would require a heck of a lot of thrust to capture it into Earth orbit.

 

[MANT!]

What are you on about now? 4179 Toutatis has a mean radius of over 2.5 km, an estimated mass of 50 billion metric tons, and as its aphelion is 4.1 AU, it would require a heck of a lot of thrust to capture it into Earth orbit.

damn you..bringing facts into this conversation.. Begone!

 

[CassandraSaturn]

i honestly believe that OP is crazy in his own head.

 

[{ Emilia }]

i honestly believe that OP is crazy in his own head.

I honestly believe you need to learn to address people's post instead of insulting them.
Infraction for flaming. Comments to PM.

Attack the post, not the poster.

 

[publiusr]

What are you on about now? 4179 Toutatis has a mean radius of over 2.5 km, an estimated mass of 50 billion metric tons, and as its aphelion is 4.1 AU, it would require a heck of a lot of thrust to capture it into Earth orbit.

It isn't always the mass that can get in the way. Moving something that large takes time of course.

This object is smaller--but might actually be harded to deal with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_TK7
This most recent find is quite stable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(469219)_2016_HO3

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_trojan

I often wonder about this object: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2060_Chiron
Chiron is probably a refugee from the Kuiper belt and will probably become a short-period comet in about a million years.

That means the inner solar system will have something 128 miles wide or so diving into it. Not a worry to us now, of course.