The jig may be up for an «asteroid» that’s expected to get nabbed by Earth’s gravity and become a mini moon next month.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The jig may be up for an “asteroid” that’s expected to get nabbed by Earth’s gravity and become a mini moon next month. Instead of a cosmic rock, the newly discovered object appears to be an old rocket from a failed moon-landing mission 54 years ago that’s finally making its way back home, according to NASA’s leading asteroid expert. Observations should help nail its identity. “I’m pretty jazzed about this,” Paul Chodas said. “It’s been a hobby of mine to find one of these and draw such a link, and I’ve been doing it for decades now.” Chodas speculates that asteroid 2020 SO, as it is formally known, is actually the Centaur upper rocket stage that successfully propelled NASA’s Surveyor 2 lander to the moon in 1966 before it was discarded.
