The timespan makes 2019 LF6 the record holder for shortest year of any object smaller than a planet. The asteroid measures 1km (0.6miles) in diameter making it relatively big for an asteroid. The orbit is unusual too, as it travels around space in an elliptical loop that sees it closer to The Sun than Mercury, the closest planet to the star in our Solar System at one point and travelling further than the next one along, Venus, at another stage.
As reported by CNET, Quanzhi Ye of Caltech, who discovered the asteroid released a statement saying: “You don’t find kilometre-size asteroids very often these days.
“Now that most of (the larger objects) have been found, the bigger ones are rare birds.
“Its unique orbit explains why such a large asteroid eluded several decades of careful searches.”
2019 LF6, was discovered at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego.
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The observatory also discovered another so-called Atira asteroid this year.
Atira asteroids are designated as such as their orbit all entirely within the orbit of Earth.
2019 AQ3 and 2019 LF6 are the 19th and 20th such celestial objects to be spotted.
Tom Prince, a physics professor who works for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab theorised: “This suggests that sometime in the past they were flung out of the plane of the solar system because they came too close to Venus or Mercury.”
NASA has proposed a mission called Near-Earth Object Camera which would look specifically for Atira asteroids.
Most asteroids are found deeper in space, past the next planet along from Earth, Mars.
A large asteroid belt is found between Mars and the fifth planet from The Sun, gas giant Jupiter.
The total mass of the belt is 22 percent that of Pluto.
Four asteroids, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas and Hygiea make up about half of the mass of the belt.
Ceres is large enough to classify as a dwarf planet also.
