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CLEVELAND – Astronomers in Hawaii scanning the skies for asteroids that could catastrophically crash on Earth spotted a mysterious new object in the sky in September.
At first, scientists using the National Aeronautics and Space Administration-funded Pan-STARRS1 surveying telescope on Maui thought it was just another celestial rock too small to damage Earth if it deviated too close. But they studied it a bit more as they were intrigued by its size and unusual orbit near Earth.
The director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA in California, Paul Chodes, examined its orbit and realized that it passed close enough to Earth in 1966 to have its origin here. Chodes speculated that the object scientists dubbed “2020 SO” was actually a Centaur top-stage rocket thruster from the ill-fated Surveyor 2 unmanned mission to explore the lunar surface, which was launched at Around the time in 1966 when Chodes projections showed 2020 SW to be closer to earth.
Surveyor 2 was a probe intended to gently settle on the moon and send images back to Earth to help NASA find suitable landing sites for the next manned Apollo missions. He crashed on the moon instead of doing this job. A Centaur rocket thruster developed at NASA’s Glenn Cleveland Research Center that propelled the lander to the moon continued to rush through the solar system as it was supposed to. Eventually, it settled into an orbit that brought it back close to Earth this year.
Earlier this week, space agency scientists used data collected by NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) to prove Chodes was right.
To definitively identify 2020 SO as a Centaur rocket thruster, a team led by Vishnu Reddy, associate and planetary professor at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, compared the spectrum of SO 2020 with that of the type of steel that was used in Centaur rocket boosters of the 1960s. When it did not match perfectly, Reddy and his team hypothesized that the deviation resulted from the analysis of fresh steel instead of the steel that has spent 54 years in space.
On December 1, Reddy’s team obtained spectral data from another Centaur rocket thruster that has been orbiting Earth since 1971 in an attempt to find an “apples to apples” comparison. The consistency between the two led Reddy to decide that the mystery object was definitely the Centaur rocket from the 1966 Surveyor 2 mission.
“This conclusion is the result of a huge team effort,” said a statement from Reddy released by NASA.
NASA Glenn was in charge of the Centaur program from 1963 to 1988, according to Space Flight Systems associate director Scott Graham, who worked on the project in the 1980s.
Fueled by liquid hydrogen frozen at temperatures around minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit, Centaurs are top-stage rockets that ignite at high altitudes to take payloads to their final destination after a rocket strikes. lower stage, like an Atlas rocket, ignites on the ground and launches the suit. in the upper atmosphere. The lower phase rocket separates from the Centaur and falls into the ocean, as the Centaur accelerates through space.
NASA historians Glenn say that the rocket’s name “Centaur” was proposed by the German engineer who developed it, Krafft Ehricke, after a creature from Greek mythology with a human head and a torso on it. the body of a horse. He equated the stronger “Atlas” section of the rocket that propelled it from the face of the Earth to the rear section of the creature’s workhorse, and its top, which contained its payload and guidance, to the smarter human section of the creature.
Graham says NASA Base Cleveland developed the Centaur rocket and managed it through a team of contractors. The rockets are still used today for unmanned missions to launch weather and communication satellites around Earth, as well as for missions to other planets, including the Perseverance rover that NASA sent to Mars over early this year, Graham explains. He described the program’s greatest technological legacy as pioneering the use of liquid hydrogen as rocket fuel, which Glenn did in partnership with a company called Pratt & Whitney.
The 1960s rocket thruster that recently returned close to Earth has never been to Glenn, although its prototypes were tested in his high-altitude wind tunnel, which subjected it to atmospheric pressure conditions, temperature and radiation similar to those encountered in space. A Centaur test model is currently on display outside one of the buildings at NASA’s Glenn Research Center.
“The one we displayed in front of our building is not exactly the same version of the Centaur launched in 1966,” Graham says. “The one who returned to Earth recently is more cylindrical, like a can of soft drink,” which is about 10 feet in diameter and 30 meters in length.
Although the Surveyor 2 mission which used the return rocket was not successful, Graham said other Surveyor craft were working as intended so the space agency had the data it needed to send astronauts to. the moon during subsequent Apollo missions. Two years after the Surveyor 3 spacecraft landed on the moon, Apollo 12 astronauts Alan F. Bean and Charles (Pete) Conrad, Jr., landed close enough to take pictures and bring back several of its components on earth. A television camera they recovered from Surveyor 3 is currently on display at the National Air and Space Museum.
The space agency says the old rocket approached Earth on December 1 and will remain in Earth’s gravitational dominance sphere until it returns to a new orbit around the Sun in March 2021. It is predicted to return to Earth’s neighborhood again in March 2021. Another 16 years, says Graham.
Graham said that he and his fellow NASA Glenn thought it was “cool and exciting” that the old Centaur had once again returned to Earth’s vicinity, although he noted that many other Centaurs left by past launches are in various orbits around the Sun or Earth.
“It’s not unique,” Graham says. “It’s just getting a lot of publicity because some astronomers have noticed it and seen it as getting relatively close to Earth.”
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