Nonetheless, moderately than some asteroid that may orbit across the Earth, it might truly simply be some outdated area junk that made its manner again to our planet.
Dr. Paul Chodas, the director of NASA’s Heart for Close to Earth Object Research, believes that the article, named Asteroid 2020 SO, is an outdated booster rocket from the 1960s.
“I believe this newly found object 2020 SO to be an outdated rocket booster as a result of it’s following an orbit in regards to the Solar that’s extraordinarily much like Earth’s, practically round, in the identical airplane, and solely barely farther away the Solar at its farthest level,” Chodas instructed CNN.
“That is exactly the type of orbit {that a} rocket stage separated from a lunar mission would comply with, as soon as it passes by the Moon and escapes into orbit in regards to the Solar. It is unlikely that an asteroid might have developed into an orbit like this, however not unimaginable.”
Chodas analyzed the movement of the asteroid backwards in time to try to hyperlink it with any recognized lunar mission launch and located that it was doubtless within the “neighborhood of the Earth again in late 1966.”
He stated that correlates with the launch of Surveyor 2 on September 20, 1966. That mission was designed to have a delicate touchdown on the Moon, however a failure led to the spacecraft crashing, Chodas stated. The Centaur rocket that was used to spice up the spacecraft handed by the Moon and went into orbit close to the Solar and has not been seen once more, till now, Chodas suspects.
The item is prone to enter right into a distant orbit round Earth in late November, and if it is an asteroid it could be thought-about a mini-moon. Nonetheless, if it’s a booster rocket as Chodas suspects, it can simply be one other piece of area particles floating round area.
“In a month or so we’ll get a sign of whether or not or not 2020 SO actually is a rocket physique, since we must always begin with the ability to detect the impact of daylight stress has on the movement of this object: if it truly is a rocket physique, it is going to be a lot much less dense than an asteroid and the slight stress resulting from daylight will produce sufficient change in its movement that we must always be capable to detect it within the monitoring information,” Chodas stated.
It’s uncommon for long-lost rocket phases to be captured from orbit in regards to the Solar and into orbit in regards to the Earth, and this may solely be the second occasion of a rocket stage getting captured from orbit.
The one different time it occurred was in 2002 from what could have been the Saturn V higher stage from Apollo 12, Chodas stated.
CNN’s Ashley Strickland contributed to this report.
