Astronomers Discover Possible 60s-Era Moon Rocket Booster Heading Back To Earth (teslarati.com) 66
An anonymous reader quotes Teslarati:
On August 19th this year, astronomers using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System observatory in Hawaii spotted an object destined to enter Earth orbit this fall. Designated as object 2020 SO, the item is now believed to be a rocket booster from NASA's Surveyor 2 mission which crash landed on the Moon in 1966 during the Apollo-era of the Cold War's space race.
"I suspect this newly discovered object 2020 SO to be an old rocket booster because it is following an orbit about the Sun that is extremely similar to Earth's, nearly circular, in the same plane, and only slightly farther away the Sun at its farthest point," Dr. Paul Chodas, the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, explained in comments to CNN.
"That's precisely the kind of orbit that a rocket stage separated from a lunar mission would follow, once it passes by the Moon and escapes into orbit about the Sun. It's unlikely that an asteroid could have evolved into an orbit like this, but not impossible," he said. This specific type of event has only happened once before, namely in 2002 with a Saturn V upper stage from Apollo 12, according to Dr. Chodas.
"I suspect this newly discovered object 2020 SO to be an old rocket booster because it is following an orbit about the Sun that is extremely similar to Earth's, nearly circular, in the same plane, and only slightly farther away the Sun at its farthest point," Dr. Paul Chodas, the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, explained in comments to CNN.
"That's precisely the kind of orbit that a rocket stage separated from a lunar mission would follow, once it passes by the Moon and escapes into orbit about the Sun. It's unlikely that an asteroid could have evolved into an orbit like this, but not impossible," he said. This specific type of event has only happened once before, namely in 2002 with a Saturn V upper stage from Apollo 12, according to Dr. Chodas.
Cosmos to humans: (Score:3, Funny)
"Here, take your shitty junk back!"
Re: Big news about to hit! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Please stop spamming links to your irrelevant content. This has been going on for more than 4 years now and it's about time it stops!
Along with APK, you are the main reason Slashdot needed to block anonymous posts thus hurting oppressed people all over the world who can't post anymore without being afraid that their oppressing government will get to them.
And now you are trying to profit from it by spamming links about it. Sad, so sad...
Re: (Score:1)
This is my favorite #YouTube video that I ever made. A Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan and Elton John's Rocketman trailer mashup. A song that @WilliamShatner
sung at an award show in the 1970's.
Instead of covering what is your favorite #YouTube video that you ever made, maybe you should concentrate on other people living around you.
By the way, Major Tom sung by Chris Hadfield was much better...
--
my 2 cents
Re: (Score:1)
\Wednesday's #YouTube video is almost done. Need a few final tweaks and a thumbnail before uploading tomorrow. After that, I'll pencil in video ideas for October.
Many Thanks C.D.! We are all waiting for new high end content produced by yourself, we will never ever let you down!
--
my 2 Adam Sarword cents
Re: (Score:1)
The problem with black furniture is that the dust is obvious. The problem with switching to 4K video that the dust on the black furniture is obvious. So, yeah. Cleaning up my home office before I record #YouTube video.
I know what you mean! It also shows the sweat from armpits on white t-shirts coming almost to the middle of the t-shirt. It even shows the sweat on black t-shirt someone just put on before recording a video. All you have to do is to look at the videos and pictures to understand what I mean unless you have a vision loss in one eye as well.
--
my 2 humble Adam Sarword cents
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
How about that a-hole who keeps telling everyone to not be a moran?
Re: (Score:2)
I like to think it's about stopping the dickhole who tried to tell me that twisted pairs and differential signalling don't help mitigate external interference, only cross-talk.
Anonymous posting should be removed completely. It's always been more detriment than benefit on Slashdot.
Re: (Score:1)
It's because they can't figure out a two line script to filter ascii swastikas.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure that they got tired of that one turbo-autist that was using /. as his personal blog. A simpler and much more subtle solution would have been to make moderation affect the karma of whoever posted the "anonymous" message.
And it still does dick for most of the spam, which comes from a few of millions of troll accounts that got registered over the past decade or so. They don't give a fuck about anonymous posting, they'll just start using a new burner account. You didn't think there are really six mill
Re: (Score:2)
I think the assumption back then was that making a bit of a mess wasn't too big of a deal because a) it was a race against the USSR and b) as technology rapidly improved and we colonized the solar system we could just clean it up later.
Re: (Score:2)
We both know clean up was never a consideration. We're humans. We destroy shit and only in retrospect do we ever decide cleaning shit up is in our best interest and only then if it's creating a problem.
Don't let it back in (Score:3)
We have enough boosters already, we haven't got enough rockets for the boosters we already have.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Don't let it back in (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Found. Not Discovered. (Score:1)
Big difference guys.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Negative. Public humiliation is the best teacher.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When did you discover that?
Re: (Score:2)
Instinct.
Not Found. RE-found (Score:1)
We already knew it existed, just lost track of it.
Re: (Score:2)
You are a day late and a dollar short.
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
Re: (Score:2)
No. Literally synonyms [thesaurus.com]. They even have "find" in the definition, before the list of other synonyms, and "found" is just the past tense of "find".
Re: (Score:2)
sterotypical white devil thinking (Score:2)
They're always "discovering" shit the locals all new about already for ages.
Re: (Score:2)
Makes sense. I mean when we go trekking the stars we may well discover a planet filled with an alien race. The locals can be part of what you are discovering.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is it possible to write history without a perspective? It only makes sense that you would get a white euro-centric historical record since we have written language. Most native history is passed down by word of mouth. Precious few written records have been found.
We find pictographs and artifacts but rarely do we find written anything.
So with that in mind, of course Columbus discovered American, because the rest of the world outside of American, did not realize it was even there.
Had the native Americans foun
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen this one. (Score:5, Funny)
I've seen this one. [wikipedia.org] It gains sentience, makes a robot clone of Spock, then merges with Captain Decker before flying back out into space, never to be seen again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, sorry, misread the summary. I can honestly say that I had to read the summary, because like the recent Star Trek movies (everything after the one with Picard and the Nexus), I have little memory of this one beyond the fact that there was a probe called V'Ger, something weird happened, the end. Initially, I remembered it so badly that I conflated it with the probe in Star Trek IV and was thinking it came to find the whales.... :-(
I remember Khan through Generations. Everything else is a blur.
Re: (Score:2)
I've read this one. [wikipedia.org] Among other results, a duplicate of Stonehenge is created a few hundred yards north of the real one. Or possibly they were swapped.
J002E3 (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Leave nothing but footprints (Score:3)
So are we going to recover the booster, or at least put it in a stable orbit? It'd be nice to see what 60 years of micrometeorites have done - might give us a ballpark lifetime on the ISS and future space projects.
And out of principle, we really should clean up our shit before it hits someone. Or at least put a few magnetic solar powered beacons on it so we can track it and deal with it later. That'd be a fun NASA project.
Re:Leave nothing but footprints (Score:4, Interesting)
So are we going to recover the booster, or at least put it in a stable orbit? It'd be nice to see what 60 years of micrometeorites have done - might give us a ballpark lifetime on the ISS and future space projects.
And out of principle, we really should clean up our shit before it hits someone. Or at least put a few magnetic solar powered beacons on it so we can track it and deal with it later. That'd be a fun NASA project.
One of the things we need to start doing is clearing Earth's orbit of the dead junk that's out there. It's too bad we have nothing like the Space Shuttle anymore. We could bring back some of the more historically important stuff that way, but, that's not going to happen. We won't see another shuttle-type vehicle in our lifetimes.
That leaves:
1 - Robotically giving a shove to the stuff so it'll fall into the atmosphere and burn up, and...
2 - Putting stuff we want to save for history's sake into stable orbit so that its possible it CAN be recovered in the future.
Re:Leave nothing but footprints (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One of the things we need to start doing is clearing Earth's orbit of the dead junk that's out there. It's too bad we have nothing like the Space Shuttle anymore. We could bring back some of the more historically important stuff that way, but, that's not going to happen. We won't see another shuttle-type vehicle in our lifetimes.
That leaves: 1 - Robotically giving a shove to the stuff so it'll fall into the atmosphere and burn up, and... 2 - Putting stuff we want to save for history's sake into stable orbit so that its possible it CAN be recovered in the future.
Small ion drives and gaffer tape ought to do the trick.
Re: (Score:3)
>We won't see another shuttle-type vehicle in our lifetimes.
Why would we want one? Assuming Starship comes to fruition it will be superior to the Shuttle is pretty much every way. Install a passenger capsule and a robot arm in a "chomper" cargo design and you've got something with the versatility of the shuttle, along with a vastly larger cargo bay/workshop that could be pressurized (or not) on demand, with enough room to allow astronauts to work on all but the largest deployed satellites without the r
Re: (Score:2)
Need to get SpaceX to recover it, shove in a few Raptor engines, and send it back out again with enough comsats to provide a constellation around the Moon. Recycling!
Will one of the Voyagers encounter a micro black hole somewhere in the outer cloud, whip a U turn, and come back as V'Ger?
Re:Leave nothing but footprints (Score:5, Informative)
nice to see what 60 years of micrometeorites have done
Most of the damage done in Earth orbit is by manmade debris. This booster hasn't been near Earth for a long time: it's in an independent orbit around the Sun that only now is syncing up with Earth, maybe for the first time since the 1960s.
There isn't much manmade debris in such orbits, so this stage won't be representative.
We're already much better at cleaning up our shit than in the 1960s. Launches to Earth orbit have to follow strict regulations: anything in LEO is required to reenter within x years; stages have to be passivated to reduce the risk of explosions; a graveyard orbit has been established above GEO, etc.
This is hardest for missions that leave Earth orbit. For the Moon, most of the Saturn V stages were aimed to impact the Moon after separation. For other targets, the last rocket stage enters an elliptical orbit around the Sun instead.
Re: (Score:3)
nice to see what 60 years of micrometeorites have done
Most of the damage done in Earth orbit is by manmade debris. This booster hasn't been near Earth for a long time: it's in an independent orbit around the Sun that only now is syncing up with Earth, maybe for the first time since the 1960s. There isn't much manmade debris in such orbits, so this stage won't be representative.
That's a good point; I guess it won't be so useful for Earth satellites. Still, it would be good data for designing probes headed to the outer planets.
We're already much better at cleaning up our shit than in the 1960s. Launches to Earth orbit have to follow strict regulations: anything in LEO is required to reenter within x years; stages have to be passivated to reduce the risk of explosions; a graveyard orbit has been established above GEO, etc. This is hardest for missions that leave Earth orbit. For the Moon, most of the Saturn V stages were aimed to impact the Moon after separation. For other targets, the last rocket stage enters an elliptical orbit around the Sun instead.
It's those untracked rocket bits left to orbit the Sun that are worrisome, but I suppose the odds of an old booster in solar orbit hitting a satellite are astronomical.
Re: (Score:2)
We see what you did there.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems to me that that would make the data more valuable. We've got data on some Earth orbits – I was reading recently about data from recovered Hubble solar panels – but do we already have data on the kind of space this booster has traversed?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it's very nearly the exact same space that Earth traverses, so yes, we do have some data. It might offer a further glance of what Earth orbit is like once you get away from Earth's local space, but it's a pretty fair bet that it's very similar aside from there being a generally lower density of stuff, mostly moving at slower speeds (since Earth accelerates anything nearby towards itself), and some buildup of material near the Lagrange L4 and L5 points.
Re: (Score:1)
Will this FINALLY convince those "moon landing was a fake" idiots? (or does it have to land on their heads literally?)
Since it's 2020 ... (Score:4, Funny)
I would rather put my money on a "space missile" fired by a passing alien ship 50 years ago. The people, panicked by the incoming doom from above quickly begin to burn down society, ending the world as we know it.
The missile, lands rather than explodes, containing vast stores of knowledge, which the Humans who just blasted themselves back to the stone age can no longer use. Because.. 2020.
Re:Since it's 2020 ... (Score:4, Funny)
quickly begin to burn down society, ending the world as we know it.
So, business as usual then ?
V'ger (Score:2)
I for one welcome our new over lord V'ger. Live long and V'ger
Re:Hello, handsome! (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we please have a 'Spam' downmod that can be applied only by accounts over a certain age, to only accounts under a certain age? Each eligible account would be allowed a limited number of such downmods, and these downmods would not count against the user's total mod points. Also, perhaps accounts under the specified age limit with too many 'spam' downmods could be either terminated or put on ice for a few weeks or months.
I'm tired of seeing this shit and tired of burning mod points on it.
Re: (Score:2)
All we really need is for flagging to do something. In a functional system, many people flagging the same comment as "spam" (or "swastika spam", etc.) would result in a review of the comment, and deletion. Obviously Slashdot is non-functional.
Re: (Score:2)
Makes you wonder what the "flag as inappropriate" nonsense is about now. Either way, the Slashdot style method for handling this would be to toss them in another queue like meta mod which selected and changing users can review voluntarily for karma.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, that is what mod points are for.
That old saying again (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
So when the dinosaurs launched their Scalytail 3 probe...
Can you see the landing? (Score:2)
Surveyor 1 landed on the Moon on June 2, 1966 to collect photographs for the Apollo program’s landing sight assessment;
Did they hire the /. editors?