Scientists have realized that what they called an asteroid expected to get caught in Earth's orbit and become a "mini-moon" may not be an asteroid at all, but instead a 54-year-old section from a rocket coming back to our planet.
NASA's head for its Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), Paul Chodas, said that the object was first observed by a telescope in Hawaii in September.
Chodas said further observations of the object, called Asteroid 2020 SO, revealed that it had an almost circular orbit around the sun in a manner the same as Earth, an odd feature of an asteroid, which is the first hint that it may have come from here.
Chodas said that the object is also in the same orbital plane as Earth, not tilted above or below, while at odd angles, asteroids originating in deep space orbit the sun. Finally, the approaching Earth speed is around 2,400 kilometers per hour, which is sluggish by asteroid standards.
The NASA scientist contends that 2020 SO is actually the upper stage of a Centaur rocket that in 1966, successfully launched NASA's Surveyor 2 unmanned lunar probe into the moon before it was scrapped.
The lander was planned to land on the moon, but when one of its thrusters jammed, it had crashed there. The rocket, meanwhile, as it was planned to do, swept past the moon and into orbit around the sun.
Based on its brightness, Asteroid 2020 SO is estimated to be about eight meters long, which would make it approximately the size of the Centaur rocket section, which would be less than ten meters long and three meters in diameter.
Chodas has made such discarded bits of NASA history a personal hobby of trying to locate them and is eager to test his speculation as the object travels nearer.
"I'm pretty jazzed about this," Chodas told The Associated Press. "It's been a hobby of mine to find one of these and draw such a link, and I've been doing it for decades now."
He expects the Asteroid 2020 SO will be caught in Earth's orbit until it gets near enough next month and will spend approximately four months orbiting Earth before back to its own orbit around the sun.
Mini moons, objects briefly orbiting Earth, are rare. According to space and astronomy news outlet Universe Today, while more have probably occurred over history, only two have been confirmed: one from 2006 to 2007 and another discovered earlier this year that was in orbit from 2018 to 2020.
