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Astronomy enthusiasts eager to get a glimpse of what might be a piece of space junk from a 1960s NASA mission are in luck.
An object called 2020 SO – which was captured last month by the Earth’s gravitational pull during its solar orbit – is expected to arrive within 31,000 miles of the planet on Tuesday, according to The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0.
“We still don’t know what it is: an asteroid or the Surveyor 2 booster,” VTP founder Gianluca Masi wrote on the site, which is broadcasting the nearby flyby.
On November 20, Masi captured a first image of the space debris, which appeared as a point in the sky.
Scientists at NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies analyzed the object’s path and followed it over time, according to CNET.
“One of the possible paths for 2020 SO brought the object very close to Earth and the Moon in late September 1966,” CNEOS Director Paul Chodas said last month.
“It was like a eureka moment when a quick check of the launch dates of the lunar missions showed a match with the Surveyor 2 mission,” he added.
The hapless lander Surveyor 2 ended up crashing on the moon as the Centaur rocket sped through space, CNET reported.
2020 SO is expected to remain in Earth orbit until March 2021, when it ventures into a new orbit around the sun.
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