Fact #176
Strange but true
A rock some tens of metres across called Kamo'oalewa keeps pace with Earth around the Sun and has done for about a century, and its colours match lunar rock rather than any asteroid.
It is a quasi-satellite: not in orbit around Earth, but locked into the same year, so it appears to loop around us. If the spectrum means what it looks like, it is debris thrown off the Moon by an impact. A Chinese mission launched in 2025 to go and get a sample, which should settle it.
Source: Sharkey et al., Communications Earth & Environment 2, 231 (2021) · checked Sep 2026