Earth will soon welcome a temporary mini-moon, but this newly discovered object object, the apparent planet, may have a really unnatural origin – a booster rocket from the 1960s.
Substance, Designated 2020 SO, was recently used by astronomers Pan-StarRS1 Telescope in Hawaii. It ‘O expect to be a temporary mini-moon, it is an event Occurs from time to time, When asteroids pass by they form a few loops around the Earth before resuming their space travel around the Sun. This happened Recently, For example, with the so-called 2020 CD3 budget.
Calculations show that the 2020 SO’s journey as a mini-moon will begin in October 2020 and end around May 2021, Reports Earthsky. NASA is Catalog In its JPL’s small database database browser, object objects and designated them as asteroids, specifically asteroids belonging to the Apollo family. Based on its physical and orbital characteristics.
Not to be confused with the Apollo space program of the 1960s and 1970s, Apollo asteroids There are asteroids closest to Earth that do not meet closer to the Sun than 1.017 AU, with an average distance between 1 AU Earth and Sun: Apollo asteroids also have a semi-major axis (half of the longest length of an elliptical orbit) greater than 1 AU And its length is not greater than 6 miles (10 km). 2020 So there is no threat to Earth, as it will not come close More than about 31,400 miles (50,640 km), according to the JPL database. The object is estimated to be between 20 and 20 45 feet (6 – 13.7 m) long.
But here’s the thing – this object can’t be an Apollo asteroid or an asteroid at all.. Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center for Neer Earth ject Project Studies, thinks it could actually return space junk, a surveyor 2 Centaur Rocket Booster, launched by NASA on September 20, 1966. Here’s what it is Said CNN:
I suspect that this newly discovered object Bjet 2020 SO is considered to be an old rocket booster because it is behind orbit. [around] The sun which is similar to the earth, almost spherical, similar in the same plane and slightly farther away [from] The sun at its most distant stage. It is precisely the type of orbit that separates a rocket stage from a lunar mission, once it passes through the moon and escapes into the orbit of the sun. It is unlikely that asteroids could have evolved in orbit in this way, but it is not impossible.
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As Chodas points out, Points to many signs This thing is of unnatural origin. 2020 SO orbits the Sun once every 387 days, very close to our planet’s 365-day orbit. It is also moving very slowly, At a speed of 1,880 miles per hour (3,025 km / h), which is a sudden slowdown for the asteroid. Fourteen verseBy the end of 1966, the 2020 SO would have been closer to our planet, finding and engineering the orbit of the project, so the time matched nicely.
This particular NASA mission ended in failure, while the surveyR 2 Lander Crashed Near the Copernicus crater on the moon. T.The centaur he used in the mission flew behind the upper phase moon, never to be seen again.Maybe, until then Now.
We will know more in late October when this object comes close enough to set new standards for scientists, including spectrographic observations that will reveal its chemical composition. At that time, We will be able to tell whether 2020 SO is made from rock or synthetic material.
If we prove it to be the highest stage of the centaur, it will only mark the second time that something like this has happened. As Chodas told CNN, the Saturn V upper stage from Apollo 12 returned for a visit in 2002.
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