Although the moon is our only permanent natural satellite, astronomers have discovered many other near-Earth objects that could be considered honorary 'mini' moons
The simple answer is that Earth has only one moon, which we call “
”. It is the largest and brightest object in the night sky, and the only solar system body besides Earth that humans have visited in our space exploration efforts.When Earth first formed, around 4.5 billion years ago, it had no moons, but that soon changed. Researchers believe that the proto-Earth was struck by an object the size of Mars, nicknamed Theia, blasting much of its crust into orbit.
These fall into a few groups. First there are temporary satellites; objects that have been captured by Earth’s gravity, putting them into orbit before they eventually escape again. We know of only two – a small asteroid called
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