Asteroid Or Space Junk?

 

Astronomers said they discovered an approaching object toward the earth but its speed is not that fast        “….approximately 1,880 miles per hour (3,025 km/h) or 0.84 km per second (.5 mi/sec).”(Phys) That low speed according to the news is kind of slow for an asteroid.

Astronomers suspected the approaching object could not be a piece of rock or an asteroid but rather a part of a spacecraft launched during 1966 that has been lost and now coming back home. It is kind of space junk or a booster rocket form the 1966 space mission particularly Surveyor 2 as the news said. They name the approaching object as 2020 SO. If it comes into contact with earth’s orbit it could be what they called “mini moon”. However, it will be just temporary. The news said it will be from October 2020 up to May 2021.

“The working theory is that 2020 SO may actually be the Centaur stage of the United Launch Alliance rocket that propelled Surveyor 2 out of Earth's orbit. The object's size, which researchers have determined to be roughly between 21 and 46 feet long, is a relatively close match for the rocket's dimensions (approximately 41 feet). It's also moving at a much slower clip than what is expected of a natural asteroid, or even rocks that have been ejected from the lunar surface.”(Popular Mechanics)

“Astronomers believe the object may actually be a piece of human-made space junk that's, well, returning home…… Some scientists think the object may be what's left of a mission that launched for the moon more than 50 years ago. NASA's Surveyor 2 spacecraft launched atop an Atlas LV-3C Centaur-D on September 20, 1966. Unfortunately, NASA lost contact with the craft three days later when a thruster failed to start, sending the mission on a tailspin into the lunar surface.” (Popular Mechanics)

“Dr. Paul Chodas, the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, believes that the object, named Asteroid 2020 SO, is an old booster rocket from the 1960s. "I suspect this newly discovered object 2020 SO to be an old rocket booster because it is following an orbit about the Sun that is extremely similar to Earth's, nearly circular, in the same plane, and only slightly farther away the Sun at its farthest point," Chodas told CNN. "That's precisely the kind of orbit that a rocket stage separated from a lunar mission would follow, once it passes by the Moon and escapes into orbit about the Sun. It's unlikely that an asteroid could have evolved into an orbit like this, but not impossible."” (CNN)

 

“The initial assumption was that this mysterious blip was an asteroid. The object, termed 2020 SO2[2020 SO] by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, appears to have been temporarily captured by Earth's gravity. Earth has captured "minimoons" like this before, and scientists have spotted them a couple times in recent years. It's a natural part of our planet's movement through space. But some observers now say this minimoon might not be natural after all. People built it, they think, back in the 1960s. It's possible that as 2020 SO2 comes closer, more detailed observations will  settle the matter. But in the meantime, we're left wondering whether Earth's incoming minimoon is a long-lost thing from this planet, or a space rock dropping in for a short visit.” (Live Science)

 

The main point : There is an object approaching planet earth and astronomers suspected that this thing or object that will become earth mini moon once it enters earth’s orbit is likely to be just a space junk from the 1966 Surveyor 2 and not an asteroid.