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In addition to supporting a variety of NASA planetary missions, the NASA infrared telescope installation at Maunakea on the Big Island of Hawaii is also used to determine the composition of near-Earth objects. Credit: University of Hawaii Institute of Astronomy / Michael Connelley
The object, discovered in September by astronomers searching for near-Earth asteroids, has sparked interest in the planetary scientific community due to its size and unusual orbit.
Use of data collected at NASAThe infrared telescope (IRTF) infrastructure and orbit analysis of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, scientists have confirmed that Near-Earth Object (NEO) 2020 SO is, in fact, a 1960’s- Era Centaur Rocket Booster.
The object, discovered in September by astronomers searching for near-Earth asteroids from the NASA-funded Pan-STARRS1 survey telescope on Maui, has sparked interest in the planetary scientific community due to its size and from its unusual orbit and has been studied by observatories around the world.
Further analysis of the 2020 SW orbit revealed that the object had come close to Earth a few times over the decades, with an approach in 1966 bringing it close enough to suggest it may have come from Earth. . Comparing this data with the history of previous NASA missions, Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS, concluded that 2020 SO could be the rocket thruster for the top stage Centaur of NASA’s ill-fated Surveyor 2 mission in 1966. on the moon.
This animation shows the temporary orbit of 2020 SW around the Earth from November to March 2021. The object is believed to be the Centaur upper stage booster rocket from the Surveyor 2 mission launched to the Moon in 1966. As the Surveyor 2 lander crashed into the lunar surface, the exhausted Centaur rocket drifted past the moon and found itself in an unknown solar orbit. More than 50 years later, the Centaur rocket has apparently returned, entering Earth orbit on November 10 where it will remain until March 2021 before escaping to a new solar orbit. This animation was sped up a million times faster than in real time. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Equipped with this knowledge, a team led by Vishnu Reddy, Associate and Planetary Professor at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, performed tracking spectroscopy observations of 2020 SO using NASA’s IRTF on Maunakea, Hawai’i.
“Due to the extreme weakness of this object following the CNEOS prediction, it was a difficult object to characterize,” said Reddy. “We got color observations with the Large Binocular Telescope, or LBT, which suggested that 2020 SO was not an asteroid.”
This photograph shows a model of the Surveyor lander. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Through a series of follow-up observations, Reddy and his team analyzed the composition of 2020 SO using NASA’s IRTF and compared the spectral data from 2020 SO with that of 301 stainless steel, the material of Centaur rocket thrusters in the 1960s. While this was not immediately a perfect match, Reddy and his team persisted, realizing that the discrepancy in spectral data could be the result of analysis of the fresh steel in a laboratory versus steel that would have been exposed to the harsh conditions of space weather for 54 years. This led to Reddy and his team to investigate further.
“We knew that if we wanted to compare apples to apples, we had to try to get spectral data from another Centaur rocket thruster that had been in Earth orbit for many years and then see if it matched the spectrum better. 2020 SO, ”Reddy said. “Due to the extreme speed at which Earth-orbiting Centaur boosters travel through the sky, we knew it would be extremely difficult to lock in with the IRTF long enough to get a strong and reliable dataset.
This 1964 photograph shows a Centaur top stage rocket before it was mated to an Atlas booster. A similar Centaur was used when Surveyor 2 launched two years later. Credit: NASA
However, on the morning of December 1, Reddy and his team achieved what they thought was impossible. They observed another Centaur D rocket booster from 1971, the launch of a communications satellite that was in geostationary transfer orbit, long enough to get good spectrum. With this new data, Reddy and his team were able to compare them to 2020 SO and found the spectra to be consistent with each other, thus definitively concluding 2020 SO to be a Centaur rocket thruster as well.
“This conclusion is the result of a tremendous team effort,” said Reddy. “We were finally able to solve this mystery thanks to the excellent work of Pan-STARRS, Paul Chodas and the team from CNEOS, LBT, IRTF and observations around the world.
2020 SO made its closest-to-Earth approach on December 1, 2020, and will remain in Earth’s gravitational dominance sphere – a region of space called a “hill sphere” that extends to approximately 1.5 million kilometers from our planet – until it escapes. back in a new orbit around the Sun in March 2021. As NASA-funded telescopes survey the sky for asteroids that may pose an impact threat to Earth, the ability to distinguish natural objects and Artificial is invaluable as nations continue to explore and objects end up in orbit around the Sun. Astronomers will continue to observe this particular relic from the start of the space age until it is extinct.
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