4 ms·

So is this man-made space junk or what?

domtron_vox 11y ago
> "The object is only 1 to 2 metres in size, and its trajectory shows that it has a low density, and is perhaps hollow. That suggests an artificial object, “a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us”, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It could be a spent rocket stage or panelling shed by a recent Moon mission. It is also possible that the debris dates back decades, perhaps even to the Apollo era." Probebly.
schiffern 11y ago
Almost certainly one of the various artificial object we discarded in orbit around the sun. For a complete list of candidate objects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_in_... Because their orbits are so close to the Earth (essentially they're artificial near-Earth asteroids), they're periodically recaptured into quasi stable orbits around Earth. Example: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/J002e3f_orbit.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/J002e3f_... >The object is only 1 to 2 metres in size, and its trajectory shows that it has a low density, and is perhaps hollow. That suggests an artificial object, “a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us”, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It could be a spent rocket stage or paneling shed by a recent Moon mission. It is also possible that the debris dates back decades, perhaps even to the Apollo era. An object seen orbiting Earth in 2002 was eventually identified as a discarded segment of the Saturn V rocket that launched the second mission to land men on the Moon. Ahh yes, the curious case of J002E3, aka the S-IVB stage of Apollo 12. The example orbit animation above is J002E3, actually! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J002E3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J002E3

> "The object is only 1 to 2 metres in size, and its trajectory shows that it has a low density, and is perhaps hollow. That suggests an artificial object, “a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us”, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It could be a spent rocket stage or panelling shed by a recent Moon mission. It is also possible that the debris dates back decades, perhaps even to the Apollo era." Probebly.

schiffern 11y ago

Almost certainly one of the various artificial object we discarded in orbit around the sun. For a complete list of candidate objects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_in_... Because their orbits are so close to the Earth (essentially they're artificial near-Earth asteroids), they're periodically recaptured into quasi stable orbits around Earth. Example: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/J002e3f_orbit.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/J002e3f_... >The object is only 1 to 2 metres in size, and its trajectory shows that it has a low density, and is perhaps hollow. That suggests an artificial object, “a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us”, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It could be a spent rocket stage or paneling shed by a recent Moon mission. It is also possible that the debris dates back decades, perhaps even to the Apollo era. An object seen orbiting Earth in 2002 was eventually identified as a discarded segment of the Saturn V rocket that launched the second mission to land men on the Moon. Ahh yes, the curious case of J002E3, aka the S-IVB stage of Apollo 12. The example orbit animation above is J002E3, actually! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J002E3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J002E3