A new mini-Moon to join Earth’s orbit; could be space junk from 1960s

2020 SO has been classified in ‘JPL small body database’ as an Apollo asteroid. It is all set to zoom past nearest to the Earth on 1st December 2020 at a distance of 50,000 kilometres and on 2nd February 2021 at a distance of 220,000 kilometres.

As per the information published on CNN website, Dr Paul Chodas of CNEOS, believes that this space object is not any ordinary heavenly body and it may be a lost rocket, launched somewhere in the 1960s.

Furthermore, this new mini-moon is perceived to be an artificial object which orbits around Sun in 1.06 years. Along with its slower velocity and orbiting period, it is expected to be a lost man-made object in the space. It was found approaching towards Earth through a 71-inch Pan-STARRS1 telescope at Maui in Hawaii on September 17, 2020.

According to the astronomers, a rocket launcher was lost 50 years ago, which was a rocket booster of ‘Surveyor-2’ launched on September 20th,1966.
The ‘Surveyor-2’ mission was a lunar lander mission which was launched in the space with an aim to explore the Moon. After its launch, the mission failed due to a blast in the spacecraft and the space controllers soon lost the contact with the craft. Ultimately, it crashed on the Moon’s Copernicus crater, as cited on EarthSky website.

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As a consequence of the crash, the rocket attached to the craft ‘Atlas LV-3C Centaur-D’ got lost in the space. As per prior estimations, the size of ‘2020 SO’ is reasonably similar to that of the lost rocket.

In the hindsight, scientists have claimed that they will detect whether ‘2020 SO’ is an asteroid or an artificial object based on the effect of sunlight. Researchers have been trying to determine its motion on the basis of the effect of sunlight. According to the studies, if it is a rocket-body, then sunlight pressure will bring a considerable change in its motion due to less density it poses and hence would certainly substantiate the predictions of the astronomers.

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