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The Associated PressOctober 12, 2020 10:22:51 AM IST
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,” said Paul Chodas. The Associated Press. “It’s been a hobby for me to find one of these and make that bond, and I’ve been doing it for 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 ended up crashing into the moon after one of its thrusters failed to ignite on the way. Meanwhile, the rocket passed in front of the moon and was put into orbit around the sun like foreseen garbage, never to be seen again, perhaps until now.
A telescope in Hawaii last month discovered the mysterious object heading our way while doing a search aimed at protecting our planet from the rocks at the end of the world. The object was quickly added to the count of asteroids and comets found in our solar system by the International Astronomical Union Center for Minor Planets, just 5,000 less than the million mark.
The object is estimated to be approximately 8 meters (26 feet) 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 caught Chodas’s attention is that its almost circular orbit around the sun is quite similar to that of Earth, unusual for an asteroid.
“Flag number one,” said Chodas, who is director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The increasing amount of debris is a cause for concern, as man-made objects orbiting the Earth can cause dangerous collisions with space vehicles. Image credit: University of Miami.
The object is also in the same plane as the Earth, not tilted up or down, another red flag. Asteroids tend to pass quickly at odd angles. Finally, it approaches 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, essentially a lightweight, empty can, it will move differently than a heavy space rock less susceptible to external forces.
This is how astronomers typically differentiate between asteroids and space junk as abandoned rocket parts, since both appear simply as moving dots in the sky. There are likely dozens of fake asteroids, 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 that of Earth.
Even more exciting, Chodas in 2002 found what he believes to be Saturn V’s third leftover stage from 1969’s Apollo 12, the second moon landing by NASA astronauts. He acknowledges that the evidence was circumstantial, given the object’s chaotic one-year orbit around Earth. It was never designated an asteroid and left Earth’s orbit in 2003.
In this Aug. 13, 1965 photo 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 SO, 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 / 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. “But it’s the first time, in my opinion, that all the pieces fit together with an actual known release.”
And he’s happy to note that it’s a mission he followed in 1966, as a teenager in Canada.
Asteroid hunter Carrie Nugent of the Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts, said Chodas’s conclusion is “good” based on solid evidence. She is the author of the 2017 book “Asteroid Hunters.”
“Some more data would be helpful so we can be sure,” he said in an email. “Asteroid hunters around the world will continue to observe this 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, many embarrassing incidents of objects in deep orbit … getting provisional asteroid designations for a few days before he realized they were artificial.”
It is seldom clear.
Last year, a British amateur astronomer, Nick Howes, announced that a solar-orbiting asteroid was likely NASA’s abandoned Apollo 10 lunar module, a test for the Apollo 11 moon landing. While this object is likely 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 Earth on its respective loops around the sun in 1984 and 2002. But it was too dark to see from 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) away, he said.
He predicts that the object will spend about four months circling the Earth once it is captured in mid-November, before shooting back into its own orbit around the sun next March.
Chodas doubts the object will crash into Earth, “at least not this time.”
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