A mysterious object object will fly over the earth tomorrow and scientists are still not sure what it is.
2020 S.O. by astronomers. The object, known as The Object, will arrive 31,605 miles from our planet at 3:50 a.m. on December 1, according to NASA’s Center for Neer Earth ject Object Studies (CNEOS).
This is a “very close”, albeit safe, approach that passes about 13 percent of the average distance between our planet and the moon, said Gianluca Masin, an astronomer with the Virtual Telescope Project. Newsweek.
The object, estimated to be around 15-33 feet, was discovered on September 17, 2020 by the Pan-Stars Survey in Maui, Hawaii. The discovery was confirmed two days later by the Minor Planet Center, which is responsible for the designation of secondary bodies in the solar system.
Preliminary observations indicate that an object was an asteroid. But CNEOS scientists soon began to suspect that the 2020 SO is not a normal asteroid.
“We’re not sure it’s a planet – it’s a natural body,” Masi wrote on the Virtual Telescope Project website.
Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS, then suggested that 2020 SO may not be a single planet at all, temporarily identifying it as NASA’s failed Surveyor 2 lunar mission centrifugal rocket booster, which launched on September 20, 1966.
He came to this conclusion after turning the clock backwards and reversing the orbit of the object object using a computer model to advance his past experiment through space.
Chodas found that the decades-long project had passed relatively close to Earth several times in recent decades, with a momentary indication that it could actually launch from Earth, according to NASA.
“One of the potential pathways for 2020 SO, in late September 1966, brought the object very close to Earth and the Moon,” Chodas said in a statement. “It was like the Eureka moment when a quick check of the launch date for the lunar mission showed a match with the Surveyor 2 mission.”
The low relative velocity of the object object and the orbital plane also support the argument that the pot object is not of potential natural origin.
The 2020 SO was captured by Earth’s gravity on November 8, and calculations show that it will remain as a temporary satellite around our planet until March 2021, before it orbits the Sun in a new orbit.
Such as 2020 S.O. Coming closer to Earth, astronomers will observe the object to determine if it is really a piece of space junk from the 1960s.
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