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A part of a missile from a failed lunar mission 54 years ago could be an object discovered last month and originally identified as an asteroid that will temporarily fall into Earth’s gravitational trap starting in November.
Paul Chodas of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a planetary institute of the United States Space Agency (NASA), said the object, officially marked 2020 SO, could be the upper stage of the Centaur rocket from the launched Surveyor-2 spacecraft. in 1966.
The landing unit crashed into the moon, but the rocket passed through the celestial body and orbited the Sun like garbage.
The approximately 8-meter object was discovered in September by a Hawaiian telescope.
Its dimensions are the same as the Centaure, which can be less than 10 meters long and 3 meters in diameter.
Chodas’s attention was drawn, among other things, to the fact that the object orbits the Sun in a nearly circular orbit, which is unusual for asteroids and is approaching Earth at a slower rate than asteroids. .
As the object approaches, astronomers can make increasingly precise observations. They can determine, for example, how external forces (solar radiation) affect an object, because if it is indeed an “empty can” it will move differently than an asteroid.
Chodas predicts that the object will orbit Earth for about four months after entering the planet’s gravitational trap in mid-November and then return to its own orbit around the Sun in March.
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