after many years, the earth will have fallen so far behind that cruithne will then actually be "catching up" on the earth from "behind". when it eventually does catch up, cruithne will make a series of annual close approaches to the earth and gravitationally exchange orbital energy with earth; this will alter cruithne's orbit by a little over half a million kilometres so that its period of revolution around the sun will then become slightly more than a year. the kidney bean will then start to migrate away from the earth again in the opposite direction — instead of the earth "falling behind" the bean, the earth is "pulling away from" the bean. the next such series of close approaches will be centred on the year 2292 — in july of that year, cruithne will approach earth to about 12,500,000 kilometres.