To the naked eye, the night sky reveals only one moon. But how many moons have ever orbited Earth?
The answer seems obvious: Earth has only one moon. It's even in the name: the moon. At first, Earth's moon needed no other name, because for millennia, we didn't know any other natural satellite existed. But over centuries of astronomy and space exploration, we've discovered hundreds of moons in the solar system, and there may be more than you think circling our planet.
So the question of how many moons Earth has is more complicated than you might think. The number has changed over time — from zero, to one, to sometimes multiple moons. Other"moons" that measure just a few feet across have been far more temporary, captured by Earth's gravity for short periods before escaping back into space. In 2006, there was the up-to-20-foot-wide asteroid 2006 RH120 , a space rock that lingered for 18 months and was the first observed long-term capture of an asteroid into Earth's orbit. And 2020 CD3, a space rock up to 11.5 feet across, left Earth's orbit in March 2020 after spending three years as our mini second moon.
Some space objects, such as asteroid 2010 TK7, earn the title of"moon" because they get caught in the unique gravity of the sun-Earth or Earth-moon systems. The gravity of the two larger bodies creates regions of centripetal force, called Lagrange points, that hold smaller objects in place in gravitationally stable points in space, according to NASA . Two Lagrange points, L4 and L5, form an equilateral triangle with Earth.
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