'Mysterious Object Hurtling Towards Earth' is a 1966 Booster Rocket (nasa.gov) 31
"A Mysterious Object Is Hurtling Towards Earth, and Scientists Don't Know What It Is," read Newsweek's headline on Monday, describing an object projected to pass 31,605 miles from earth. (One astronomer told them that was roughly 13% of the average distance between the earth and the moon).
But then a computer model calculated its past trajectories through space, according to the director for NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). "One of the possible paths for 2020 SO brought the object very close to Earth and the Moon in late September 1966," he said in a statement. "It was like a eureka moment when a quick check of launch dates for lunar missions showed a match with the Surveyor 2 mission."
On Wednesday NASA described how a team led by Vishnu Reddy, an associate professor/planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, tried to prove what they'd seen was a 54-year-old booster rocket: Through a series of follow up observations, Reddy and his team analyzed 2020 SO's composition using NASA's IRTF and compared the spectrum data from 2020 SO with that of 301 stainless steel, the material Centaur rocket boosters were made of in the 1960's. While not immediately a perfect match, Reddy and his team persisted, realizing the discrepancy in spectrum data could be a result of analyzing fresh steel in a lab against steel that would have been exposed to the harsh conditions of space weather for 54 years. This led Reddy and his team to do some additional investigation.
"We knew that if we wanted to compare apples to apples, we'd need to try to get spectral data from another Centaur rocket booster that had been in Earth orbit for many years to then see if it better matched 2020 SO's spectrum," said Reddy. "Because of the extreme speed at which Earth-orbiting Centaur boosters travel across the sky, we knew it would be extremely difficult to lock on with the IRTF long enough to get a solid and reliable data set."
However, on the morning of Dec. 1, Reddy and his team pulled off what they thought would be impossible. They observed another Centaur D rocket booster from 1971 launch of a communication satellite that was in Geostationary Transfer Orbit, long enough to get a good spectrum. With this new data, Reddy and his team were able to compare it against 2020 SO and found the spectra to be consistent with each another, thus definitively concluding 2020 SO to also be a Centaur rocket booster...
So what happens next? 2020 SO made its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 1, 2020 and will remain within Earth's sphere of gravitational dominance — a region in space called the "Hill Sphere" that extends roughly 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet — until it escapes back into a new orbit around the Sun in March 2021.
As NASA-funded telescopes survey the skies for asteroids that could pose an impact threat to Earth, the ability to distinguish between natural and artificial objects is valuable as nations continue to explore and more artificial objects find themselves in orbit about the Sun.
Astronomers will continue to observe this particular relic from the early Space Age until it's gone.
But then a computer model calculated its past trajectories through space, according to the director for NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). "One of the possible paths for 2020 SO brought the object very close to Earth and the Moon in late September 1966," he said in a statement. "It was like a eureka moment when a quick check of launch dates for lunar missions showed a match with the Surveyor 2 mission."
On Wednesday NASA described how a team led by Vishnu Reddy, an associate professor/planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, tried to prove what they'd seen was a 54-year-old booster rocket: Through a series of follow up observations, Reddy and his team analyzed 2020 SO's composition using NASA's IRTF and compared the spectrum data from 2020 SO with that of 301 stainless steel, the material Centaur rocket boosters were made of in the 1960's. While not immediately a perfect match, Reddy and his team persisted, realizing the discrepancy in spectrum data could be a result of analyzing fresh steel in a lab against steel that would have been exposed to the harsh conditions of space weather for 54 years. This led Reddy and his team to do some additional investigation.
"We knew that if we wanted to compare apples to apples, we'd need to try to get spectral data from another Centaur rocket booster that had been in Earth orbit for many years to then see if it better matched 2020 SO's spectrum," said Reddy. "Because of the extreme speed at which Earth-orbiting Centaur boosters travel across the sky, we knew it would be extremely difficult to lock on with the IRTF long enough to get a solid and reliable data set."
However, on the morning of Dec. 1, Reddy and his team pulled off what they thought would be impossible. They observed another Centaur D rocket booster from 1971 launch of a communication satellite that was in Geostationary Transfer Orbit, long enough to get a good spectrum. With this new data, Reddy and his team were able to compare it against 2020 SO and found the spectra to be consistent with each another, thus definitively concluding 2020 SO to also be a Centaur rocket booster...
So what happens next? 2020 SO made its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 1, 2020 and will remain within Earth's sphere of gravitational dominance — a region in space called the "Hill Sphere" that extends roughly 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet — until it escapes back into a new orbit around the Sun in March 2021.
As NASA-funded telescopes survey the skies for asteroids that could pose an impact threat to Earth, the ability to distinguish between natural and artificial objects is valuable as nations continue to explore and more artificial objects find themselves in orbit about the Sun.
Astronomers will continue to observe this particular relic from the early Space Age until it's gone.
Re: (Score:2)
You're more annoying than a Jehovah's Witness.
Yeah, I've replied to him a few times, but nothing. I assume it's just a script running.
Re: (Score:2)
Came from Amateur Observers first. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe that this was figured out in the amateur observer community before NASA confirmed it. I saw it go by in my twitter feed. Not sure I can find it now...
I read about it a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn't confirmed then. This is still cool though. Better maybe.
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe if you stopped wasting everybody's time with your random thoughts you'd have the time to finish your b-roll.
Your audience eagerly awaits your thoughts.
Rimmer keeps saying it's aliens (Score:4, Funny)
But I'm pretty sure Lister is right - it's a garbage pod.
Short movie showing the object moving across sky (Score:5, Interesting)
A number of professional and amateur astronomers have followed this object over the past few days. The short movie below was made by Nick James with an 11-inch telescope.
http://www.nickdjames.com/spac... [nickdjames.com]
Note the changing brightness as the object rotates with a period of around 9 seconds.
Re:Short movie showing the object moving across sk (Score:5, Funny)
Note the changing brightness as the object rotates with a period of around 9 seconds.
That changing brightness is NOT caused by rotation. If my years of watching Star Trek have taught me anything, it's that pulsating changes in brightness indicate an imminent, catastrophic antimatter containment breach.
Re: (Score:2)
What goes up ... (Score:3)
Another data point in support of this hypothesis.
crap (Score:2, Interesting)
Do we really think that an orbit around the sun is safer? Makes it more expectable?
Kessler syndrome is waiting for us.
Re: (Score:2)
You think the spaceflight community didn't figure that out long ago? Earth orbit launches already have to follow rules to prevent littering.
This is from a launch in the 1960s when the problem was 4 orders of magnitude smaller.
Also, for launches beyond earth orbit, a small amount of littering is inevitable: the upper stage leaves Earth orbit, and due to the nature of the rocket equation, equipping it with enough fuel to reenter Earth orbit to make sure this stage burns up isn't really an option. For this typ
Re: (Score:2)
J002E3 (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
How fast is that? (Score:2)
Exactly how fast does a thing have to go in order to "hurtle"? I have a similar question about how far is "over yonder".