A booster rocket launched to the moon more than half a century ago returns to Earth’s orbit

The small object was discovered in September by NASA astronomers, who at first thought it was an asteroid.

A booster rocket launched to the moon more than half a century ago was captured by Earth’s gravity and will orbit our planet “for a few weeks,” reports NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched the unmanned Surveyor 2 probe on the Earth satellite in 1966, but a mid-flight problem caused the spacecraft to spiral out of control and eventually lose contact.

Now Atlas-Centaur, the upper-stage booster rocket that helped lift the ill-fated spaceship from Earth, is back in orbit around our planet. due to gravitational forces.

Experts believe it will become a temporary satellite for the next few weeks or months until it finally escapes the Earth’s gravitational pull and returns to solar orbit.

The lunar mission

The Surveyor 2 lunar lander was launched to the moon on September 20, 1966 on an Atlas-Centaur rocket. The mission was designed for reconnaissance of the lunar surface before the Apollo missions.

Shortly after takeoff, Surveyor 2 separated from the thruster as expected. But control of the spacecraft was lost the next day when one of its thrusters failed to fire, causing it to spin.

Spaceship crashed on the moon, just southeast of Copernicus crater, on September 23, 1966. Meanwhile, the upper-stage Atlas-Centaur rocket passed the Moon and disappeared into an unknown orbit around the Sun.

An asteroid?

The small object was discovered in September by astronomers operating NASA’s Pan-STARRS1 inspection telescope. Experts realized it was following a clearly curved path in the sky, a sign of its proximity to Earth.

So at first they thought it was an asteroid. The object was even christened 2020 SO, a standard designation for those celestial bodies. However, scientists at JPL’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) saw the orbit and thought it was something very different.

“A moment of eureka”

Suspecting 2020 SO was an ancient lunar mission, CNEOS Director Paul Chodas restored data from the object’s orbit to determine where it had been in the past.

He found that the object had approached Earth a few times several times over the decades, but by the end of 1966, according to his analysis, 2020 SO would be close enough to have originated on Earth.

By comparing the orbits of asteroids and satellites and making further observations, the team realized that it was likely a leftover from the early years of the space race.

“It was like a eureka moment when a quick review of the lunar mission launch dates showed a match to the Surveyor 2 mission,” Chodas explained.