Fake asteroid? NASA expert IDs mystery object as old rocket
Fake asteroid? NASA expert IDs mystery object as old rocket
By MARCIA DUNN
yesterday
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) The jig may be up for an asteroid thats expected to get nabbed by Earths gravity and become a mini moon next month. ... Instead of a cosmic rock, the newly discovered object appears to be an old rocket from a failed moon-landing mission 54 years ago thats finally making its way back home, according to NASAs leading asteroid expert. Observations should help nail its identity.
Im pretty jazzed about this, Paul Chodas told The Associated Press. Its been a hobby of mine to find one of these and draw such a link, and Ive been doing it for decades now.
Chodas speculates that asteroid 2020 SO, as it is formally known, is actually the Centaur upper rocket stage that successfully propelled NASAs Surveyor 2 lander to the moon in 1966 before it was discarded. The lander ended up crashing into the moon after one of its thrusters failed to ignite on the way there. The rocket, meanwhile, swept past the moon and into orbit around the sun as intended junk, never to be seen again until perhaps now.
A telescope in Hawaii last month discovered the mystery object heading our way while doing a search intended to protect our planet from doomsday rocks. The object promptly was added to the International Astronomical Unions Minor Planet Centers tally of asteroids and comets found in our solar system, just 5,000 shy of the 1 million mark.
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