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It’s a mystery that has puzzled scientists for months, but NASA has officially confirmed that the object in temporary orbit around Earth is a discarded piece of the 1966 Surveyor 2 rocket.
Dubbed 2020 SO, the object was first spotted by the Pan-STARRS survey in Hawaii on Sept. 17 and initially classified as an asteroid.
However, NASA’s foremost asteroid expert Paul Chodas had his suspicions due to the object’s light but distinctly curved orbit.
Chodas immediately thought of the upper stage of Surveyor 2’s Centaur rocket, a failed lunar mission, as the size of the object matched that of the debris.
His theory has now been proven by a team from the University of Arizona, led by Vishnu Reddy, who used an infrared telescope in Hawaii to observe not only the mysterious object, but a 1971 centaur still orbiting the Land.
The team compared data from both the object and the 1971 Centaur and found that they have the same composition – “definitely ending 2020 SO as well as a Centaur rocket.”
“Today’s news was super gratifying!” Chodas said via email. “It was teamwork that ended this puzzle.”
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It’s a mystery that has puzzled scientists for months, but NASA has officially confirmed that the object in temporary orbit around the Earth is a discarded piece of the 1966 Surveyor 2 rocket.
Astronomers were able to solve the mystery after 2020 SO arrived within 31,605 miles of Earth at around 3:50 am on Tuesday, allowing them to collect images and data.
“Due to the extreme weakness of this object following the prediction of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), it was a difficult object to characterize,” Reddy said.
“We got color observations with the Large Binocular Telescope or LBT that suggested that 2020 SO was not an asteroid.”
Reddy and his team sifted through a series of follow-up observations to analyze the composition of SO 2020.
The object, dubbed 2020 SO, was first classified as an asteroid, but an analysis reveals that it is the Centaur rocket (pictured) from NASA’s lost upper stage of Surveyor 2.
Astronomers compared the composition of 2020 SO with another Centaur rocket still in orbit. The results showed the two pairings, allowing them to confirm that it is the lost 1966 missile
They used NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Hawaii and compared the 2020 SO spectrum data with that of 301 stainless steel, the material from which Centaur rockets were made in the 1960s.
The team wasn’t able to find a match at first, but then realized they were analyzing fresh steel in a lab against steel that has been exposed to harsh space weather for 54 years.
“We knew that if we wanted to compare apples to apples, we would have to try and get spectral data from another Centaur rocket that had been in Earth orbit for many years to see if it better matched the 2020 SO spectrum,” Reddy said.
The Centaur rocket is currently stuck in Earth’s gravity and orbiting the planet, but will escape from the grips of our planet by March 2021 and will once again embark on its journey around the sun
“Because of the extreme speed at which Centaur repeaters in Earth orbit travel across the sky, we knew it would be extremely difficult to lock into IRTF long enough to get a solid and reliable data set.”
During the early hours of December 1, the team observed another Centuar D rocket that has been in geostationary transit orbit since 1971.
This allowed Reddy and his team to compare it to the 2020 SO and found that the spectra were consistent with each other, definitively concluding that the 2020 SO was also a Centaur rocket.
“This conclusion was the result of a huge team effort,” Reddy said.
“We were finally able to solve this mystery thanks to the great work of Pan-STARRS, Paul Chodas and the team of CNEOS, LBT, IRTF and observations around the world.”
Choda played a key role in solving NASA’s puzzle.
When the object was first announced, it decided to do its own investigation by “turning the clock back” to see the object’s orbit backwards.
He had hoped this would reveal where he was before he made his way into Earth’s gravity.
The method showed that 2020 SO had gotten a little closer to Earth a few times over the decades, but its approach in late 1966 would have been close enough that it could have originated from Earth.
The Surveyor 2 lunar lander was launched to the moon on September 20, 1966 aboard an Atlas-Centaur rocket. The mission was tasked with reconnaissance of the lunar surface prior to the Apollo missions, which led to the first manned lunar landing in 1969
“One of the possible paths for 2020 SO brought the object very close to Earth and the Moon in late September 1966,” Chodas said earlier this month.
“It was like a eureka moment when a quick check of the launch dates for the lunar missions showed a match to the Surveyor 2 mission.”
The Centaur rocket is currently stuck in Earth’s gravity and orbiting the planet.
He will escape from our planet’s hold by March 2021 and embark on his journey around the sun again, but will make another visit in 2036.
The Surveyor 2 lunar lander was launched to the moon on September 20, 1966 aboard an Atlas-Centaur rocket.
The mission was tasked with reconnaissance of the lunar surface prior to the Apollo missions, which led to the first manned lunar landing in 1969.
Shortly after takeoff, Surveyor 2 successfully separated from its Centaur top-tier booster as expected.
But control of the spacecraft was lost the next day when one of its thrusters failed to fire, causing the craft to spin.
The spacecraft crashed into the moon just southeast of the Copernicus crater on September 23, 1966.
The Centaur rocket in the upper stage passed the Moon and disappeared into an unknown orbit around the Sun.
But NASA and other astronomers may find that she has returned home for a short visit.
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