Earth gains mini-moon 2026 QQ8, orbiting since April until 2027

Technology Nov 06, 2026

Earth has a new space buddy: meet 2026 QQ8, a mini-moon that started orbiting us back in April.

Astronomers first spotted it in August, and it's set to hang around until 2027 before drifting away.

QQ8 orbits the sun in about 359 days and will get as close as 568097km from Earth. So, farther out than our regular moon.

Mini-moons are temporary Earth satellites

Mini-moons like QQ8 are small cosmic visitors that Earth occasionally captures for a short stay, usually about nine months.

There might be up to six of these temporary satellites circling us at any time.

At about six feet (2 meters) wide, QQ8 is bigger than most mini-moons but isn't coming anywhere near enough to crash into us.