The template may be ready for an “asteroid” that is expected to be trapped by Earth’s gravity and turn into a mini moon next month.
Rather than a cosmic rock, the newly discovered object appears to be an old rocket from a failed moon landing mission 54 years ago that is finally making its way home, according to NASA’s leading asteroid expert. The observations should help to pin down your identity.
“I am quite excited about this news,” Paul Chodas told the Associated Press. “It’s been a hobby for Paul to find one of these and make that bond, and Paul has been doing it for last couple of decades.”
Chodas speculates that asteroid 2020 SO, as it is formally known, is actually the upper stage of the Centaur rocket that successfully propelled NASA’s Surveyor 2 lander to the moon in 1966 before it was scrapped. The lander has been ended up crashing into the moon after one of its thrusters failed to ignite on the way. Meanwhile, the rocket went past the moon and into orbit around the sun like intended garbage, never to be seen again, perhaps until now.
A telescope in Hawaii last month was discovered the mysterious object heading our way while conducting a search aimed at protecting our planet from apocalyptic rocks. The object was quickly added to the count of asteroids and comets found in our solar system from the International Astronomical Union Center for Minor Planets, just 5,000 less than the million mark.
The object is estimated to be approximately 26 feet (8 meters) based on its brightness. That’s in the old Centaur’s ballpark, which would be less than 32 feet (10 meters) long, including the engine nozzle, and 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter.
What catch Chodas’s attention – its almost circular orbit around the sun is quite similar to that of Earth, its unusual for an asteroid.
Once the flag number ask to Chodas, who is director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The object is also in the same plane as Earth, not tilted up or down, another red flag. Asteroids often pass quickly at strange angles. Finally, it approaches toward the Earth at 2,400 kph (1,500 mph), slow by asteroid standards.
As the object gets closer, astronomers should be able to better map its orbit and determine how much radiation and thermal effects of sunlight are pushing it. If it’s an old Centaur, it would be a lightweight, empty can, it will move differently than a heavy space rock with less susceptible to external forces.
This is how astronomers normally differentiate between asteroids and space junk as abandoned rocket parts, since both appear simply as moving dots in the sky. There are dozens of false asteroids are likely to exist, but their movements are too imprecise or confusing to confirm their artificial identity, Chodas said.
Sometimes it is the other way around.
Chodas and others determined that a mysterious object in 1991, for example, was a normal asteroid rather than debris, even though its orbit around the sun resembled Earth’s.
As even more exciting, In 2002 Chodas found that what he is believes to be Saturn V’s third leftover stage from 1969’s Apollo 12, the second moon landing by NASA astronauts. Once the Chodas acknowledge that the evidence was circumstantial given to object’s chaotic one year orbit around Earth. It was never designated an be asteroid and left Earth’s orbit in 2003.
On dated 13th Aug., 1965, photo has been provided by the San Diego Air and Space Museum, technicians work on an Atlas Centaur 7 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA’s leading asteroid expert Paul Chodas speculates that asteroid 2020 , as it is formally known, is actually a higher-stage Centaur rocket that propelled NASA’s Surveyor 2 lander to the moon in 1966 before that it was discarded. (Convair/General Dynamics Astronautics Atlas Negative Collection or the San Diego Air and Space Museum via AP)
The path of the last object is direct and much more stable, which reinforces his theory.
“I could be wrong about this. I don’t want to sound overconfident,” Chodas said. “It’s the first time in my point of view & opinion that all the pieces are fit together with a real known release.”
And he’s happy to note that it’s a mission he followed in 1966, as a teenager in Canada.
An asteroid hunter Carrie Nugent of Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts, once said Chodas’s conclusion is “good” based on solid evidence. She is the author for the book of “Asteroid Hunters” in 2017.
Some kind of data would be helpful so that we can be sure, he said in an email. Asteroid travel/hunter around the world will continue to observe an object to obtain that data. I am excited to see this unfold!”
Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics noted that there have been “many, more embarrassing incidents of an objects in deep orbit … getting provisional asteroid designations for a few days before he realized they were artificial.”
It is rarely clear.
Last year-2019, a British amateur astronomer, Nick Howes, announced that a solar-orbiting asteroid was likely NASA’s abandoned Apollo 10 lunar module, that it test for the Apollo 11 moon landing. While this object is likely to be an artificial, Chodas and others are skeptical of the connection.
Skepticism is good, Howes wrote in an email. “Hopefully it will lead to more observations when it is next in our forest” in the late 2030s.
Chodas’ last target of interest passed the Earth on its respective loops around the sun in 1984 and 2002. But shed said that it was too dark to see from 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) away.
She predicts that an object will spend about four months circling the Earth once it is captured in mid-November. Before it is shooting back into its own orbit around the sun next March.
Chodas has doubts on an object will crash into Earth, “at least not this time.”
