That's no moon...

Summary

Unexplainable – "That's no moon..."

Podcast: Unexplainable (Vox)
Episode Date: December 1, 2025
Host: Bird Pinkerton
Guest: Dr. Nick Moskowitz, Lowell Observatory

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Overview

This episode explores the mysterious object 2025 PN7, a small celestial body discovered near Earth and popularly (and sometimes confusingly) called a mini-moon, quasi-moon, or quasi-satellite. Host Bird Pinkerton and guest Dr. Nick Moskowitz delve into the science, terminology, and intrigue surrounding such objects—why we care about these cosmic neighbors, what they can teach us about the Earth, the Moon, and solar system history, and how advances in planetary exploration might change what we know.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Naming the Mystery: What IS 2025 PN7?

• The discovery of 2025 PN7 led to lively public debate and terminological confusion: is it a second moon? A quasi-satellite? A mini-moon?
• According to Nick Moskowitz, the scientific community prefers the term "quasi-satellite" for PN7:

  “A term that most people in the community would agree on is a quasi-satellite.” — Nick Moskowitz (03:25)

2. Defining Near-Earth Objects and Quasi-Satellites (01:54 – 04:54)

• Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are space objects that approach Earth—nearly 40,000 tracked so far.
• Quasi-satellites, unlike true moons, orbit the Sun but do so in a way that keeps them close to Earth for long periods.
• The conversation humorously references a viral QVC clip illustrating public confusion about what constitutes a planet, a moon, or a star:

  “When it comes down to it, it doesn't really matter what label you apply to these objects. They're doing interesting things that are rare and cool. And we geek out on that.” — Nick Moskowitz (04:27)

3. Classifying Space Objects Near Earth (06:03 – 08:12)

• First step: Determine if an object like PN7 is natural or human-made space junk. Human debris, such as defunct satellites and rocket stages, often lingers in Earth’s vicinity.
• Once natural status is established, scientists consider whether the object is:
  • Moon debris (ejected fragments from impact craters)
  • An asteroid
• Potential to trace moon fragments back to specific lunar craters could validate models of our moon's history.

4. Asteroids as Solar System Time Capsules (08:12 – 14:09)

• PN7 is most likely an asteroid, formed around the Sun 4.5 billion years ago, now temporarily orbiting near Earth.
• Asteroids, unmodified by Earth's tectonic or weathering processes, preserve the "original pots of modeling clay" from which the solar system formed:

  “There’s no wind on asteroids. There's no rain. There's no plate tectonics. There's none of the things that produce all the rocks that we see here on the surface of the Earth...” — Nick Moskowitz (12:50)

5. Asteroids, Meteorites, and Scientific Value (13:36 – 16:16)

• Occasionally, asteroids deliver meteorites (“nature's version of a sample return mission”) to Earth.
• Meteorites, which are physically analyzable, often lack context about their origin, while asteroids observed in space have more contextual data but are harder to study in detail.

  “A meteorite is like a free sample delivery courtesy of the universe.” — Bird Pinkerton (14:45)

6. Why Quasi-Satellites are Especially Exciting (15:44 – 17:35)

• Quasi-satellites are close, accessible, and their orbits can be well-characterized, offering a hybrid scientific value between meteorites and distant asteroids.
• Studying them may help link meteorite chemistry to specific parent bodies in the solar system, deepening our understanding of solar system evolution.

7. Future Prospects: Exploration, Resources, and Missions (16:59 – 19:36)

• Asteroids (including quasi-satellites) are considered as potential resources for material harvesting or spacecraft refueling (“in situ resource utilization”).
• Sample return missions like NASA's OSIRIS-REx and Japanese Hayabusa missions have brought back asteroid materials; China plans to target quasi-satellites specifically.

  “We'll be able to get that particular target we think is one of the lunar ejecta things. But we'll find out hopefully when the spacecraft gets there…” — Nick Moskowitz (18:08)

8. The Big Takeaway (19:36 – End)

• Rather than fixating on labels (“second moon”, “quasi-satellite”), the episode argues for wonder at these tiny cosmic neighbors—natural archives of the solar system’s earliest days, right in Earth's backyard.

  “We should talk about how cool it is that we have essentially tiny time capsules for neighbors, just like little archives of our solar system that are out there to be explored.” — Bird Pinkerton (19:36)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Bird Pinkerton, reflecting on the naming debate:

  “You can call objects like this whatever you want. PN7, quasi-moon, quasi-satellite. Just don’t call them uninteresting.” (04:54)

• On space junk:

  “We're not good at cleaning up after themselves here on Earth and definitely not in space. And pieces of space junk hang around the Earth moon system in a very similar way.” — Nick Moskowitz (06:03)

• On holding a meteorite:

  “You're holding these rocks, you're looking at it, and this thing is older than the Earth, right? It's literally the oldest thing you can put your hands on.” — Nick Moskowitz (14:56)

• On meteorites as free science:

  “A meteorite is like a free sample delivery courtesy of the universe.” — Bird Pinkerton (14:45)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:54 — Introduction to quasi-satellites, Nick Moskowitz
• 03:32 — Defining “quasi-satellite”
• 06:03 — Differentiating between space junk, moon debris, and asteroids
• 08:12 — The value of asteroids as time capsules
• 13:36 — The journey and value of meteorites
• 16:16 — Why quasi-satellites fill a crucial scientific gap
• 16:59 — Asteroids as future resource stations (“ISRU”)
• 18:08 — Osiris-Rex and international asteroid missions
• 19:36 — Episode summary: labels matter less than the opportunity to explore and learn

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Tone & Language

The episode blends accessible scientific explanation with humor and genuine wonder. Bird Pinkerton uses personal anecdotes ("the QVC moon clip") and approachable analogies ("pots of modeling clay") throughout, making the technical science engaging for a broad audience. Dr. Moskowitz is equally enthusiastic, blending friendly honesty (“I don’t know what that means”) with clear scientific context.

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Final Thoughts

The episode makes a strong case for the excitement and importance of studying quasi-satellites. They aren't just curious, undefined chunks of rock—they're crucial tools for science and perhaps for future exploration, holding secrets from the solar system's formative years. Whether you’re a fan of cosmic mysteries or just someone who likes to know what’s floating in your planetary neighborhood, PN7—and objects like it—are more than worthy of our attention.

Transcript

[Bird Pinkerton]

Support for the show comes from Charles Schwab. At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award winning service, low costs and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Support for this show comes from Strawberry Me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job or are you stuck in one you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from Strawberry Me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Get Go to Strawberry Me unstuck to claim a special offer Last August, astronomers detected a small object in space. This thing that has been hanging out near us apparently for decades, doing vaguely moon like sorts of things. People got excited about it, but there was this kind of terminological kerfuffle around what to call it. In articles on TikToks, on news shows, people were pretty quick to say that it was not a second moon, but then they would throw out different terms. So people would talk about quasi moons and quasi satellites, sometimes also explaining related terms like mini moons, and it all gets a little confusing. So for now let's just call this.

[Nick Moskowitz]

Object by its name, 2025 PN7. So it's not the most exciting name. I hope somebody with a proper name or a nickname for it at some point. But for now we just kind of refer to it as PN7.

[Bird Pinkerton]

This guy's name is Nick Moskowitz, which in my opinion is much better than 2025 PN7. And I reached out to him because he spends time at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, researching space objects in general. When I asked him if PN7 was a moon or what, he hesitated for a moment. He did tell me PN7 is one of many objects in the general vicinity of Earth.

[Nick Moskowitz]

These are what we refer to generally as Near Earth objects, and they're cleverly named that way because they get close to the Earth. There are almost 40,000 known near Earth objects in the solar system that we track and keep track of.

[Bird Pinkerton]

But PN7 is maybe a little more special than some Near Earth objects, because there are lots of objects that just kind of whiz past us, right? Or only cross our Paths sometimes. And then there are the objects that stick around for a while. Those can be mini moons which orbit the Earth, or they can also do what PN7 seems to be doing, which is to say orbiting the sun, but doing it in such a way that keeps it close to the Earth for a while.

[Nick Moskowitz]

And so I think probably a term that most people in the community would agree on is a quasi satellite.

[Bird Pinkerton]

So that's what I'm going to refer to PN7 as a quasi satellite. But if you're still confused, that's fair. As I told Nick, I kind of was, too. Have you ever seen the QVC clip?

[QVC Hosts]

Then look at this one. This is what we call emerald, but really it's more like a seafoam.

[Bird Pinkerton]

I love that color where it's like two QVC hosts.

[QVC Hosts]

It almost kind of looks like what the Earth looks like when you're a bazillion miles away from the planet.

[Bird Pinkerton]

Moon. And they're going, the moon is also a star.

[QVC Hosts]

Isn't the moon a star?

[Nick Moskowitz]

No, the moon is the planet, darling.

[QVC Hosts]

The sun is a star.

[Bird Pinkerton]

And someone's like, no, the moon is a planet.

[QVC Hosts]

Didn't you do that thing in grade school where you had to name the planets? And there was Uranus and there was Saturn and the one with the rings and then the Earth and with the. The moon is never in there, dude. It's not a planet.

[Bird Pinkerton]

All right, here, look.

[QVC Hosts]

This is key lime.

[Bird Pinkerton]

There's something about this that, like, sort of reminds me of that clip.

[Nick Moskowitz]

100%. This is. This is. I haven't seen that clip. I don't know. It sounds awesome. But when it comes down to it, it doesn't really matter what label you apply to these objects. They're still just interesting things to study. Like, they're doing interesting things that are rare and cool. And we geek out on that and get excited about it and study these things to learn something that we didn't know beforehand. So that makes it exciting to me.

[Bird Pinkerton]

So this is unexplainable. I'm Bird Pinkerton, and you can call objects like this whatever you want. PN7 quasi moon, quasi satellite. Just don't call them uninteresting, because Nick Moskowitz is going to tell us some of the things we can learn from them. Also, just in case you were wondering, the QVC house did eventually sort of figure out what the moon is.

[Nick Moskowitz]

Okay, the moon is, what, a natural satellite, but things live on it. That means it's a planet. I don't know.

[QVC Hosts]

Is that what Google said?

[Nick Moskowitz]

I don't know what that means.

[Bird Pinkerton]

No, I don't like that at all.

[QVC Hosts]

I don't even know what that means.

[Bird Pinkerton]

I do.

[QVC Hosts]

I use Google all the.

[Bird Pinkerton]

So you have detected an object in space, something that seems to be acting like a mini moon or a quasi satellite. Congratulations. Now what can you learn from it? Nick says kind of the first step is to figure out whether or not it is space trash.

[Nick Moskowitz]

It turns out that when humans put stuff into space, we leave junk behind. We leave rocket bodies and boosters and defunct satellites and things like that. We're not good at cleaning up after themselves here on Earth and definitely not in space. And pieces of space junk hang around the Earth moon system in a very similar way. They're doing laps around the Earth just like some of these natural objects do.

[Bird Pinkerton]

We're making mini moons.

[Nick Moskowitz]

We're making. Yeah, we've made a whole population of thousands of mini moons that are artificial in nature. Man made things.

[Bird Pinkerton]

But let's say you've poked around, done your homework, and you've determined that this is not just space garbage, which is interesting, but a different kind of interesting from a space object like PN7. If your object is not space trash, you now get to figure out if it is essentially a little piece of our actual moon, like moon debris.

[Nick Moskowitz]

We know by looking at the moon, our primary moon, our permanent moon, that it has lots of craters on it. And some of those craters are quite large, tens, if not hundreds of miles across. When you form a big crater like that, you kick off a lot of ejecta. You think of sort of a rock smashing into a pond. You're going to splash a lot of water out of the pond. The analogy for the Moon, when a crater gets formed from an impact on the Moon, the ejecta from that gets splashed out into space.

[Bird Pinkerton]

Studying Moon debris like this could potentially teach us about the history of the Earth and of our moon. Nick hopes we might someday be able to trace specific bits of Moon debris back to the craters where they came from. And he says that would in turn help us check the computer models we have of what happened to the Moon in the distant past. But if our space object is not moon debris or space junk, it could also be a third thing, an asteroid.

[Nick Moskowitz]

It's a chunk of rock that formed around the sun four and a half billion years ago. It's been floating around the solar system. And by studying these, we're really able to study sort of a time capsule of what's been happening in the solar system for four and a half billion years, which is pretty cool.

[Bird Pinkerton]

That's what Most people think. PN7 is an asteroid that has journeyed over to us and is hanging out for a while. And this kind of space object is scientifically fascinating for a bunch of reasons, which we will get into after some very fascinating ads.

[QVC Hosts]

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[Bird Pinkerton]

Yikes.

[QVC Hosts]

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[Bird Pinkerton]

Ouch.

[QVC Hosts]

Could have done better.

[Bird Pinkerton]

Same goes for where you invest.

[QVC Hosts]

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[Bird Pinkerton]

Learn [e-mail].

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[QVC Hosts]

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[Nick Moskowitz]

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[Bird Pinkerton]

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[QVC Hosts]

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[QVC Hosts]

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[Nick Moskowitz]

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[Bird Pinkerton]

This show comes from SC Johnson. We've all been there. Choosing not to wear your new white shoes because there's a 10% chance of rain. Bending awkwardly over the tiny coffee table to enjoy a sip of your latte, not ordering the red sauce. Those feelings of dread are what we call stainxiety. But now you can break free from your stainxiety with Shout's triple acting spray that has stain fighting ingredients to remove a huge variety of stains so you can live in the moment and clean up later. Just breathe and Shout with Shout Triple Acting Spray. Learn [e-mail]. The winner of this challenge will win an actual literal real life piece of the Moon. Welcome back. As Nick was telling me, it seems like PN7 is an asteroid that has traveled in from elsewhere in the solar system and is now hanging out near us for a while. And asteroids like this can potentially help us learn about our solar system and its history. Because when it comes to learning about that history here on Earth, we have this problem. Imagine that someone gives you, like, some little colorful clay pots for your birthday. Okay? You take the clay out, you roll it all together for some reason, so the colors are all mixed up, and then you fold the clay and you tear it apart, and you reroll the different parts and you bake them, maybe. And then for some reason, you decide to grind them all into dust, and then you mix everything with water, and you roll it out again. It's very difficult, right, to go from that final product back to your original little pots of clay. And that is basically what, what Earth rocks are like. Here on Earth, we have weathering and tectonic plates and all kinds of forces that fold and melt and blend our rocks into something very different from the original rock that they came from. So it's not always easy to figure out what our rocks were like when the planet first came together. If you go to asteroids, though, Asteroids.

[Nick Moskowitz]

And things that don't have atmospheres, don't weather. There's no wind on asteroids. There's no rain. There's no plate tectonics. There's none of the things that produce all the rocks that we see here on the surface of the Earth that look so familiar to us.

[Bird Pinkerton]

On asteroids, there is radiation from space, but the rocks should be at least closer to the original pots of modeling clay. And that means that. That they are potentially amazing sources for the history of the solar system. Of course, asteroids also have a problem. They are very far away, which makes them hard to study. But every once in a while, the universe kind of throws us a bone in the form of a meteorite.

[Nick Moskowitz]

These are chunks of material that start on the surface of an asteroid, make their way to the Earth in some way that we don't really understand, appear in the night sky or the daytime sky as a shooting star or a bright flash of light as that rock is passing through our atmosphere. And if that rock is big enough to survive that intense heating of being a shooting star, it can land on the ground and be picked up as a meteorite. These are some of the most valuable scientific time capsules that we can go out and put our hands on.

[Bird Pinkerton]

Not even just time capsules like space capsules.

[Nick Moskowitz]

Also, they're Space rocks, right? They're amazing, you know, so meteorites are incredibly valuable, valuable tool because we can go and pick them up, study them in a laboratory in detailed ways that we would never be able to do with a rock that's out there in space that we're just studying remotely with the telescope. We think of that sort of process of meteorite delivery to the surface of the Earth as nature's version of a sample return mission. So we can send spacecraft out to go pick stuff up off the surface of an asteroid or a comet, hopefully one day, and bring that back to Earth.

[Bird Pinkerton]

But that costs like a billion dollars. A meteorite is like a free sample delivery courtesy of the universe. And it means that Nick can go out and hold something from space if he wants to.

[Nick Moskowitz]

You're holding these rocks, you're looking at it, and this thing is older than the Earth, right? It's literally the oldest thing you can put your hands on. And it's like, that's just amazing, right?

[Bird Pinkerton]

We've studied meteorites to learn about the history of the solar system and to try and understand how we got water on Earth. But they also have a problem, which is we don't have a ton of context for them. So there is a fair amount you can learn from studying Iraq's makeup. But ideally you want as much information as you can get about where it's been. With asteroids, we have a fair amount of information because we can use math to try and study their trajectory.

[Nick Moskowitz]

We lose that context from the vast majority of meteorites, meaning we don't know where they came from in the solar system.

[Bird Pinkerton]

So we have asteroids in space, which have lots of context, but we can't hold them in our hands and analyze them in detail. And we have meteorites, which we can analyze in detail, but which often have less context. Kind of feels like an O. Henry story, except this is where quasi satellites might come in. They're still in space, so we can get some context on them. But they're also closer to us. So Nick says they're somewhat easier to examine.

[Nick Moskowitz]

We can study these objects in detail as sort of case studies and say, okay, this is the kinds of things that are coming into the Earth Moon system. Let's understand what it looks like through a telescope and then compare that to the objects that are not just passing by or, you know, doing a few laps and then leaving, but instead compare it to the ones that actually hit the Earth and are recovered as meteorites. And if we can improve and establish meaningful linkages between what we see remotely with our telescopes in terms of asteroid properties and in the laboratory with meteorites, then we gain a much more holistic view of the solar system.

[Bird Pinkerton]

There are also other reasons that it could be cool to gather more in depth data about asteroids.

[Nick Moskowitz]

There's a lot of talk right now about what's called in situ resource utilization, isru, which really means just using the stuff in space to produce material that'll be valuable for spacecraft or human exploration.

[Bird Pinkerton]

So the thinking is basically what if asteroids could be like refueling stations as we go through space, or just useful sources of material? It's a pretty far in the future kind of idea. But these little asteroidal quasi satellites could help us understand more about how realistic it might be.

[Nick Moskowitz]

So that's the sort of exploration and resource utilization perspective on these objects.

[Bird Pinkerton]

Maybe the most exciting next step would be if we could go examine something like a quasi satellite directly. We haven't known about them for all that long. Actually we found the first one back in the 2000s. And no one has gone out to take a sample of a mini moon or a quasi satellite directly yet. But there are a bunch of different organizations that have gone out to kind of take a look at a whole bunch of different near Earth objects.

[Nick Moskowitz]

NASA had a recent mission called Osiris Rex that went to a near Earth object called Bennu. That object in particular was targeted because we think it's. We now know that it's water and organic rich. Osiris Rex touched down on the surface of Bennu, picked up some samples and brought them home. So we now have pieces of Bennu curated and brought back to Earth. That's one example. There are others. The Japanese have launched a pair of just amazing missions called hayabusa and hayabusa2. Both sample return missions. Going to near Earth objects and interacting with the surface. And in both cases bringing stuff home for us to study in the laboratory. The Chinese are getting involved in this as well and have a whole fleet of planned missions coming up. And actually one of those is going to be targeting one of these quasi satellite kind of things. So we'll be able to get that particular target we think is one of the lunar ejecta things. But we'll find out hopefully when the spacecraft gets there, you get up close imagery, you get more detailed information, you can hopefully with better certainty of whether or not this thing actually is a chunk of the moon. Does it look like the moon? Does it look like something else? So yeah, it's an exciting time to be sort of involved in this, this area of planetary exploration. It's a really rapidly evolving space.

[Bird Pinkerton]

So watch this space. And meanwhile we'll probably continue to find cool objects floating around near us. And instead of talking about whether we should call them second moons or quasi satellites or whatever else, I would argue we should talk about how cool it is that we have essentially tiny time capsules for neighbors, just like little archives of our solar system that are out there to be explored. This episode was produced by me, Bird Pinkerton. It was edited by Joanna Solotarov, who also runs the show. Noam Hassenfeld made the music. Christian Ayala did the sound design and the mixing on this episode. Melissa Hirsch checked our facts. Thank you Melissa and Jorge Just Meredith Hadnot, Julia Longoria, Sally Helm and Amy Padula are even better than the very best QVC clip. Thank you to Brian Resnik, always, always for co creating the show with me and with Noam. And thanks to Tracy Becker at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and to David Trilling at Northern Arizona University in beautiful Flagstaff, Arizona. I appreciate both of you for taking the time to help me make sense of the universe. If you have thoughts on this episode or questions, please write in. We are@ unexplainableox.com and I would love to know, for example, if you have dreams about the moon or if you have ever turned into a werewolf. If you want to support the show and help us keep making it, please join our membership program. It is at Vox.com members you get ad free podcasts, unlimited access to Vox Journalism, and if you tell our bosses that you signed up because you love Unexplainable, you'd be doing us a big solid. You can also do us a big solid by leaving a nice rating or a review, or just by telling people in your life to listen. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast network and we will be back in your feed very soon.

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