Just months after the discovery of our solar system’s first known interstellar visitor, it turns out there’s another alien asteroid residing in plain view.
Scientists reported that the interstellar resident is an asteroid sharing Jupiter’s orbit, but circling in the opposite direction.
They say the asteroid, known as 2015 BZ509, has been in a peculiar backward orbit around the sun ever since getting sucked into our solar system.
About two miles across, it joined our cosmic club in the first moments after our solar system was formed 4.5 billion years ago.
The finding, published in the Royal Astronomical Society journal, comes months after the discovery of our first known interstellar visitor, a cigar-shaped asteroid that zoomed by last autumn.
Backwards-flying asteroid ‘comes from another star system’
