NASA expert suspects 'mini-moon' about to enter Earth's orbit is old space junk from 1960s

A ‘mini-moon’ that according to NASA will soon enter Earth’s orbit might not necessarily be an asteroid but a part of old space junk. While talking to CNN about the tiny object named Asteroid 2020 SO, the director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, Dr Paul Chodas said that it is his belief that it might be an old booster rocket way back from the 1960s.

The so-called ‘mini-moon’ is currently on track to come as close as 27,000 miles away into Earth’s orbit. Noting that it is only his ‘suspicion’, Chodas said that the Asteroid 2020 SO is following an orbit about the Sun which is “extremely similar” to that of Earth. 

Talking further about the orbit that the asteroid is following, he told the media outlet that it is precisely the same kind that a rocket stage which was separated from a lunar mission would embark upon after passing by Earth’s natural satellite and escaping into the orbit about the Sun. Chodas even said that it is “unlikely” for an asteroid to evolve into such orbit but added that it is not “impossible”. 

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Tracing asteroid’s movement backward

According to the report, he traced the movements of the asteroid backward in a bid to find its link with any known lunar mission from the past. By doing so, he found that it was likely in the ‘vicinity of the Earth back in late 1966’. Correlating the ‘mini-moon’ with the launch of Surveyor 2 on September 20, 1966, Chodas informed that the mission, that turned out to be a failure as the spacecraft crashed, was designated to make a soft landing on the Moon. He has suspected that the rocket which was used to boost the spacecraft was not seen after it passed by the Moon and entered another orbit ‘until now’. 

Meanwhile, NASA on September 21 revealed an overview of its $28 million mission for 2024 including $16 million for a lunar landing module. The plan which has been set up by United States President Donald Trump will need major financing as the massive amount of $28 billion would cover the budgetary years of 2021-25. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, during a phone briefing, said that NASA has all the prerequisites to make sure that they meet the president's ambitious goal of landing the first woman on the moon by the end of 2024.

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