MEXICO: A strange piece of space junk appropriately designated WT1190F has cycled back in its orbit and will topple back to Earth in November.
We know it is about 2m long.It seems to be hollow — or at least bent.
We know it is on an orbit that lobbed it far beyond the moon.
Otherwise, we have no idea what it is — or who put it up there.
It’s expected to come crashing back down to Earth about 5pm on November 13 — probably in the Indian Ocean south of Sri Lanka.
The baffling bit of metal has caught the attention of Near-Earth Object researchers who are gearing up to watch its re-entry to our atmosphere closely as a means to figure out what it is — and to test the planet’s early warning system for potentially dangerous objects.
It’s not often such an entry event can be so accurately predicted.
The odd object was discovered in early October by the Catalina Sky Survey — a project intended to provide early warning of approaching comets and asteroids.
Initially, astronomers had no idea what the strange moving gleam in their cameras could be.
But tracking its trajectory back led to sightings dating back as far as 2012 being uncovered.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told the science journal Nature: “(It’s) a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us.”
It could be a spent rocket stage. It could be a piece of panelling from a space mission.
It may even date back to the Apollo Moon missions of the 1960s.
Astronomers aim to get detailed observations of the object as it burns up in the hope an analysis of the light spectrum produced will give clues as to what it was made of, and therefore originally used for.
MEXICO: A strange piece of space junk appropriately designated WT1190F has cycled back in its orbit and will topple back to Earth in November.
We know it is about 2m long.It seems to be hollow — or at least bent.
We know it is on an orbit that lobbed it far beyond the moon.
Otherwise, we have no idea what it is — or who put it up there.
It’s expected to come crashing back down to Earth about 5pm on November 13 — probably in the Indian Ocean south of Sri Lanka.
The baffling bit of metal has caught the attention of Near-Earth Object researchers who are gearing up to watch its re-entry to our atmosphere closely as a means to figure out what it is — and to test the planet’s early warning system for potentially dangerous objects.
It’s not often such an entry event can be so accurately predicted.
The odd object was discovered in early October by the Catalina Sky Survey — a project intended to provide early warning of approaching comets and asteroids.
Initially, astronomers had no idea what the strange moving gleam in their cameras could be.
But tracking its trajectory back led to sightings dating back as far as 2012 being uncovered.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told the science journal Nature: “(It’s) a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us.”
It could be a spent rocket stage. It could be a piece of panelling from a space mission.
It may even date back to the Apollo Moon missions of the 1960s.
Astronomers aim to get detailed observations of the object as it burns up in the hope an analysis of the light spectrum produced will give clues as to what it was made of, and therefore originally used for.
