Mysterious object rushes towards Earth and scientists don’t know what it is

A mysterious object will fly over Earth tomorrow and scientists are still not quite sure what it is.

The object, dubbed 2020 SO by astronomers, will be “only” 31,605 miles from our planet at 3:50 a.m. ET on December 1, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

This is an “extremely close”, albeit safe, approach with the object passing at a distance equivalent to about 13% of the average distance between our planet and the moon, said astronomer Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope. Project. Newsweek.

The object, estimated to be between 15 and 33 feet in diameter, was discovered by the Maui, Hawaii-based Pan-STARRS investigation on September 17, 2020. This discovery was confirmed two days later by the Minor Planet Center, which is responsible for the designation of minor bodies in the solar system.

The first observations suggested that the object was an asteroid. But scientists at CNEOS quickly began to suspect that 2020 SO was not a normal asteroid.

“We’re not sure it’s an asteroid, meaning a natural body,” Masi wrote on the Virtual Telescope Project website.

CNEOS Director Paul Chodas then suggested that 2020 SO may not be an asteroid at all, tentatively identifying it as the Centaur rocket thruster from the failed NASA Surveyor 2 lunar mission, launched on September 20, 1966.

He came to this conclusion after winding the clock and reversing the object’s orbit using a computer model to calculate its past trajectory in space.

Chodas found that the object had passed relatively close to Earth on several occasions in recent decades, including a time that indicated that it could have actually been launched from Earth, according to NASA.

“One of the possible paths for 2020 therefore brought the object very close to the Earth and the Moon in late September 1966,” Chodas said in a statement. “It was like a Eureka moment when a quick check of the lunar mission launch dates showed a match with the Surveyor 2 mission.”

The object’s low relative speed and orbital plane also supported the argument that the object was potentially not of natural origin.

2020 SO was captured by Earth’s gravity on November 8, and calculations show that it will remain in orbit around our planet as a temporary satellite until March 2021 before escaping into a new orbit around the sun.

As Earth’s SW 2020 approaches, astronomers will observe the object to determine whether or not it is a piece of space debris from the 1960s.