Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Approaching "asteroid" might be be a booster rocket from the 60's

CNN:
The object is likely to enter into a distant orbit around Earth in late November

...

"I suspect this newly discovered object 2020 SO to be an old rocket booster because it is following an orbit about the Sun that is extremely similar to Earth's, nearly circular, in the same plane, and only slightly farther away the Sun at its farthest point,"

...

He said that correlates with the launch of Surveyor 2 on September 20, 1966. That mission was designed to have a soft landing on the Moon, but a failure led to the spacecraft crashing, Chodas said. The Centaur rocket that was used to boost the spacecraft passed by the Moon and went into orbit near the Sun and has not been seen again
Speaking of rockets, check out this one based on a The Far Side strip: