‘See while you can’

Tonight, you will be able to watch a live feed of an artificial “mini-moon” as it approaches Earth before leaving our planet’s orbit.

The object, known as 2020 SO, is not of natural origin but man-made. In fact, astronomers say it’s actually a piece of space debris – a rocket piece built in the 1960s for a doomed NASA mission.

On February 1, this rocket stage will come “very close” to our planet, according to astronomer Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project (VTP).

The VTP will show a live stream of the object as it hovers over Earth, with the stream starting at 3 p.m. ET. Head over to the VTP website to see the images, which will be provided by the project’s robotic telescopes in central Italy.

2020 SO was discovered on September 17, 2020 by the 71-inch Pan-STARRS1 telescope atop Mount Haleakalā on the island of Maui, Hawaii. In November, it was temporarily captured by Earth’s gravity, bringing the rocket into the planet’s orbit.

Computer modeling shows that 2020 SO will remain in orbit around Earth as a temporary satellite until March 7, 2021 – when it will escape the clutches of our planet and enter a new orbit around the sun.

It is not yet known when or if the object will return, but amateur astronomer Bob King writes for the Duluth News Tribune said it was a possibility, urging people to “see while you can!”

During its final close approach, 2020 SW will be approximately 139,500 miles from our planet. This is actually the second of two recent close-up flights. On December 1, 2020, SO made an “extremely close” approach, within 31,605 miles of our planet – which is about 13% of the average Earth-Moon distance – Masi previously said. Newsweek.

“After its extremely close flyby last December, 2020 SO is very close again, this time to say goodbye,” Masi wrote on the Virtual Telescope Project (VTP) website.

“As we know, this is the booster for the Surveyor 2 space mission, which has been temporarily captured by our planet. Soon this artificial mini-moon will leave our neighborhood, escaping into a new orbit around the sun.”

NASA’s Surveyor 2 mission was launched on September 20, 1966 from Cape Kennedy, Florida, aboard an Atlas-Centaur rocket. The objective was to explore the lunar surface with a robotic lander.

But the mission operators lost control of the spacecraft due to technical issues, which resulted in the mission failing. The rocket stage, however, remained in space for decades before finally being captured by Earth orbit.