Venus Has a Moon? Venus is being stalked by a "quasi-satellite."

The orbit of Venusian quasi-satellite 2002 VE68.
NASA/JPL/Caltech _____________________________________________________________________________
Venus Has a Moon?
It was thought to be alone, but Venus is being stalked by a "quasi-satellite."

THE GIST

• The asteroid 2002 VE68 takes the same time as Venus to orbit the sun once.
• The near-Earth asteroid dives as deep as Mercury's orbit and scoots through our planet's neighborhood.
• 2002 VE68's orbit is on shaky ground and will probably leave Venus alone again within 500 years.

Astronomers have been busy trying to determine the spin period and composition of Venus' moon. On Dec. 8, 2010, results of the study were announced by JPL/Caltech scientists, led by Michael Hicks.

Wait a minute; back up, I hear you ask. Venus has a Moon? Of course it does. Well, kind of... Let me explain.

It has the rather unfortunate name of 2002 VE68. That's because it was discovered on Nov. 11, 2002 by LONEOS, the Lowell Observatory Near Earth Object Search.

2002 VE68 is an Earth orbit-crossing asteroid that has been designated a Potential Hazardous Asteroid by the Minor Planet Center. For obvious reasons, this makes it a very interesting subject of study for JPL scientists.

2002 VE68 used to be a run of the mill, potential impact threat Near Earth Object (NEO). But approximately 7,000 years ago it had a close encounter with Earth that kicked it into a new orbit.

It now occupies a place in orbit around the sun where at its closest it wanders inside the orbit of Mercury and at its furthest it reaches just outside the orbit of the Earth. It is now in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Venus.

An orbital resonance is when two orbiting bodies exert a regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other due to their orbital periods being related by a ratio of two small numbers. For example, Pluto and Neptune are in an orbital resonance of 2:3, which simply means for every two times 

Pluto goes around the sun, Neptune makes three trips around.

In the case of Venus and 2002 VE68, they both take the same time to orbit the sun once. They are in a 1:1 orbital resonance. So by definition, 2002 VE68 is considered a quasi-satellite of Venus.
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