The object is part of the Arjuna asteroid belt.
To talk to Space.comUniversidad Complutense de Madrid professor Carlos de la Fuente Marcos — one of the people who discovered the mini-moon — described Arjuna as “a secondary asteroid belt made of space rocks that follow paths very similar to Earth’s orbits at an average distance from the Sun of about 93 million miles.”
He said some objects in the belt can come close enough to Earth and at slow enough speeds (about 2.8 million miles away and 2,200 miles per hour) to allow them to temporarily orbit Earth.
Other scientists even believe that, based on its past trajectory, the asteroid may be a piece of Earth’s moon that flew off after a previous impact.