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The Moon is Earth's only permanent natural satellite

The Moon is Earth's only permanent natural satellite

Here is a picture of a full Moon. A natural satellite is an object that orbits a planet or other body larger than itself and which is not man-made. There are thousands of man-made artificial satellites orbiting the Earth. We have one natural satellite called the 'Moon'. Our Moon takes 27.3 days to orbit the Earth once, moving at an orbital speed of 1 km/s. The Moon is in synchronous rotation with the Earth, always shows the same face. Since the 19th century, scientists have made genuine searches for more moons and found a number of near-Earth objects (NEOs) with orbits that are in resonance with Earth. However, they were inaccurately called "second", "third" or "other" moons of Earth. In 2016, an asteroid (HO3) was discovered on 27 April 2016; it is possibly the most stable quasi-satellite of Earth. Besides that, our natural satellite Moon has much smaller cousins, dubbed as "mini-moons." Many of them are thought to be only a few feet across and usually circle our planet for less than a year before resuming their previous lives as asteroids orbiting the Sun.

Read more about Environment, Moon, Environment

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