An asteroid spent roughly 60 years quietly shadowing Earth's journey around the Sun before astronomers noticed it in 2025. Orbital calculations show 2025 PN7 has been locked in step with our planet since the 1960s, while archival images reveal that telescopes had photographed the faint object years before anyone realised what it was.

An asteroid spent roughly 60 years quietly shadowing Earth's journey around the Sun before astronomers noticed it in 2025. Orbital calculations show 2025 PN7 has been locked in step with our planet since the 1960s, while archival images reveal that telescopes had photographed the faint object years before anyone realised what it was.

Pan-STARRS 1 detected the asteroid now called 2025 PN7 on 2 August 2025. Within weeks, orbital calculations showed that the tiny object had already been travelling in step with Earth for about 60 years. It had not gone entirely unseen. Telescopes had recorded it in older images, but no one knew that those faint points belonged to an Earth quasi-satellite until the 2025 observations provided an orbit that could be traced backwards. The distinctio…