Hurtling through Earth is a mystery object, and scientists don’t know what it is
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Tomorrow, a mystery entity could travel past the Planet, and scientists are still not entirely sure what it is.
“The object, identified by astronomers as 2020 SO, will be within “only” 31,605 miles of our Planet at 3:50 a.m. On December 1, ET, according to NASA’s Near-Earth Object Studies Center (CNEOS.)
Astronomer Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project told Newsweek, this is an “extremely close,” but secure, approach, with the object travelling at a distance equal to around 13 per cent of the average distance between our Planet and the moon.
On September 17, 2020, the Pan-STARRS survey located in Maui, Hawaii, discovered the rock, which is estimated to range about 15-33 feet long. The Minor Planet Centre, which is responsible for designating minor bodies in the solar system, confirmed the discovery two days later.
Initial findings indicated an asteroid was the object. But CNEOS scientists quickly started to believe that SO 2020 was not a typical asteroid.
Masi wrote on the Virtual Telescope Project website that they are not sure if it is a comet, i.e. a natural entity.
Subsequently, CNEOS director Paul Chodas indicated that 2020 SO could not at all be a comet, tentatively identifying it as the Centaur rocket booster from the unsuccessful Surveyor 2 lunar mission launched by NASA on September 20, 1966.
Since turning back the clock and running the orbit of the target backwards using a computer model to figure out its previous trajectory across space, he came to this conclusion.
Chodas discovered that over the past decades, the object had already passed relatively close to Earth many times, including a moment which suggested that according to NASA, it might potentially be launched from Earth.
In a statement, Chodas said that in late September 1966, one of the alternative routes for 2020 Thus took the object very close to the Earth and the Moon. When a quick search of launch dates for lunar missions found a correlation with the Surveyor 2 flight, it was like a eureka moment.
The low relative velocity and the orbital plane of the object also backed the statement that the item may not have been of typical origin.
2020 SO was caught on November 8 by Earth’s gravity. And it estimates suggest that until March 2021 it will remain in orbit around our world as a temporary satellite until it escapes back into a new orbit around the sun.