However, the LSST's tremendous light gathering power and short exposure times could allow it to detect and discover many minimoons.
Several different techniques for discovering TCOs have been considered but their small diameters, proximity, and rapid motion make them challenging targets for existing ground-based optical, meteor, and radar surveys. That model was then improved and extended to include the population of temporarily-captured flybys (TCFs), objects that fail to make an entire revolution around Earth while energetically bound to the Earth-Moon system. The first studies of the provenance, properties, and dynamics of Earth's minimoons suggested that there should be a steady state population with about one 1- to 2-m diameter captured objects at any time, with the number of captured meteoroids increasing exponentially for smaller sizes. Within a few years the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will either begin to regularly detect TCOs or force a re-analysis of the creation and dynamical evolution of small asteroids in the inner solar system. Despite significant improvements in ground-based telescope and detector technology in the past decade the asteroid surveys have not discovered another temporarily-captured orbiter (TCO colloquially known as minimoons) but the all-sky fireball system operated in the Czech Republic as part of the European Fireball Network detected a bright natural meteor that was almost certainly in a geocentric orbit before it struck Earth's atmosphere. Twelve years ago the Catalina Sky Survey discovered Earth's first known natural geocentric object other than the Moon, a few-meter diameter asteroid designated 2006 RH 120. 7Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain.6Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, Kiruna, Sweden.5Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.