Solid ground is well-nig to sustain a temporary mini-moon — and this unity might be blank space junk. Researchers are trailing an object that looks like it will represent captured by Earth's solemnity for clean a few months this winter before safely heading hinder out into the Star System. It might be a standard asteroid, but some astronomers say that the mystery object's path indicates that it could equal a split up of a 1960s era rocket.
"I'm pretty jazzed about this," Paul Chodas, the manager of NASA's Center for Cheeseparing Solid ground Object Studies told The Associated Press. Chodas is one of the world's leading experts on asteroids and has been along the lookout for returning blank space debris for decades, he told the AP.
The object was first gear identified last month by researchers in Hawaii. They named information technology 2020 Thus, and designated information technology as a near-earth asteroid.
But the physical object is a little Wyrd for a typical asteroid. Information technology's moving relatively slowly, it's on the same plane as the Worldly concern, and it's got a nearly circular orbit around the Sun, conscionable like Earth. Completely those characteristics are "red flags," according to Chodas, which could indicate that the object was once launched from Earth.
"That's on the nose the kind of orbit that a rocket stage separated from a lunar mission would follow, once it passes past the Sun Myung Moon and escapes into orbit about the Sun. IT's unlikely that an angulate could have evolved into an orbit wish this, but not impossible," Chodas told CNN in September.
The object appears to exist 26 feet long, about the unvaried size atomic number 3 the upper stage of a Centaur rocket. That, addition its path through the Solar System, makes it a favorable match for the Eruca vesicaria sativ booster that helped launch NASA's Surveyor 2 Mission in 1966. The mission itself was a failure. After it launched successfully, unitary of the thrusters onboard the space vehicle malfunctioned, sending it careening into the Moon.
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The booster that launched the ill-sure spacecraft unbroken going past the Moon, and forbidden into the Solar System. Researchers will be able to square off if 2020 SO is the booster, and non a space rock once, the aim gets a bit finisher. Boosters like this are made of comparatively light metal — it won't move the one way as a dense careen in space.
Whatever the physical object is, information technology's matter-of-course to delay in World's orbit for a some months this winter before continued connected its way. Lone a few of these temporarily captured objects (or, informally, mini-moons) have been ascertained, including one and only that hung about between 2006 and 2008, and another one that lingered un-detected for about a year, before departing in Process 2020.
Earth's next mini-moon might be space junk from the 1960s
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/12/21512725/mini-moon-space-junk-nasa
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