Earth's temporary mini moon was possibly a chunk of the main Moon.

Question

Is it true that the "mini-moon" could have potentially been a chunk of our main Moon?

Answer 1

After reading through the article I found the exact quote that was used, "That should deepen scientists’ understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, quite possibly a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid." So technically this isn't a claim because they use possibly. However, I couldn't find much information on the source News 4 Jax. But since there is not much said about it I wouldn't call it trustworthy. I looked further into the topic on my own and found a very similar article from the guardian, however they quote NASA on the topic saying, "'Given the similarity between asteroid 2024 PT5’s motion and that of our planet’s, scientists at Nasa’s center for near Earth object studies suspect that the object could be a large chunk of rock ejected from the moon’s surface after an asteroid impact long ago,' Josh Handal, program analyst for the space agency’s planetary defense coordination office, wrote in a briefing."(The Guardian, 2024). I couldn't find the briefing itself and NASA published an article confirming this as well. Both will be linked below hope this helps!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/25/earth-mini-moon-to-disappear

https://blogs.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/2024/10/02/nasa-to-track-asteroid-2024-pt5-on-next-close-pass-january-2025/

Answer 2

I spent some time reading this article and looking for other reliable sources to either prove or disprove this claim. Nasa never published an article themselves stating whether it was or wasn't part of the moon, and the fact of the matter is that we have no way of knowing for sure. It certainly wasn't a moon by astronomical definitions, as it was never in earth's orbit, (NASA Website); and we have no way of testing the matter of the object. With this information in mind, it is impossible to make a claim like this, making this article exaggerated/misleading. There is no proof of this statement, and to phrase the claim like that is knowingly inflammatory to readers' opinions.