JWST M51 image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team

This week, no earlier than February 14, a Falcon 9 will carry another private company spacecraft that will attempt a landing on the Moon. Intuitive Machine’s IM-1 Nova-C lander is pretty ambitious; while it won’t try for a pinpoint landing as exacting as SLIM’s, it’s still designed to do way better than other landers, and carry equipment to do a lot of interesting tests as it sets down and after. The Orbital Index has all the info and links to more.

I’ve been getting some inquiries about news that Venus has a moon, and there’s been some confusion about it. 

To be clear: Venus does not have a moon.

At least not really.

The original story comes from RadioLab cohost Latif Nasser, who wrote about it on Xitter (forgive me for not linking to it since I loathe that site, so here’s a link to a thread aggregator instead which I dislike slightly less).

The story is amusing and cute, so go read it. The synopsis is an old poster of the solar system had a drawing of a moon near Venus, which appeared to label as “ZOOZVE”, which is an unusual name… except it’s actually 2002 VE68, the name of an asteroid. It’s on an unusual orbit that is mostly inside the orbit of Earth, and is fairly elliptical. In fact the period of the asteroid — the time it takes to orbit the Sun — is about 225 days, which is almost exactly the same orbital period as the planet Venus! 

Mind you, 2002 VE68 orbits the Sun, but that remarkably Venusian period gives it a weird and fun property. As seen from Venus, it sometimes moves ahead in its orbit, and sometimes behind, giving it the illusion of actually orbiting the planet! Asteroids like these are called quasi-moons, and we’ve seen quite a few, including many near Earth.

So it’s not really a moon of Venus — in fact, it never gets any closer to Venus than about 30 million kilometers. But from Venus’s point of view it looks like a moon, and that’s clearly the basis of the story. Humorously, it’s been given the official name Zoozve, which I have to admit is charmingly delightful.

You can read more of the technical details on Wikipedia. A thing to note is that it gets close enough to both Earth and Mercury that gravitational interactions are inevitable, which strongly implies it hasn’t been in this orbit very long, perhaps only 7,000 years. Simulations show it may move substantially and become a Venus Trojan asteroid in just 500 years, sharing an orbit with Venus but moving 60° ahead of it.

What a great story! A fun origin for its name, and a fun scientific tale for its past and future.

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