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A Rocket Booster May Be Headed Back to Earth- Corey Monroe
Rocket Boosters detaching from a space shuttle.
In a year of unpreceded times with Coronavirus, wildfires, riots, presidential elections, Kobe Bryant's death, and distance learning we have yet another thing to worry about. But do not worry as hopefully this won't be too bad. In early August, Astronomers started to discover an object that may enter Earth's orbit. They named the object, 2020 SO.
This object was identified though on August 19th. It was determined to be a rocket booster that was thought to have crashed on the moon. They further identified the rocket booster and found that it was from NASA’s Surveyor 2 mission in 1966. The mission was part of a program that NASA set up to learn about the moon before they sent Humans there. The project lasted from 1966-1968 and they sent 7 surveyors to the moon.
The director for NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies said that, "That’s precisely the kind of orbit that a rocket stage separated from a lunar mission would follow, once it passes by the Moon and escapes into orbit about the Sun."
There is some good news with this as well though. This is so because the booster will be pushed off course by energy from the sun and will leave Earth alone by February 2021. Lastly, this rocket booster is just part of the ongoing problem with space junk as their is currently over 57,000 tracked items of space junk left by humans.
Works Cited: Ferris, Dacia J. “Astronomers Discover Possible 60s-Era Moon Rocket Booster Heading Back to Earth.” TESLARATI, 24 Sept. 2020, www.teslarati.com/astronomers-discover-mysterious-object-heading-to-earth/.
Wow- never realized there was so much space junk that could, potentially, end up back in Earth's atmosphere. I wonder what they would do if they thought it would come our way?
ReplyDeleteIt's crazy how much debris is floating around in space right now.
ReplyDeleteThat's so interesting after that many years that they discovered this! I can't even imagine how much debris we have left and what impact that debris has in space.
ReplyDeleteI find it crazy how much debris from is in space from us, and the rockets that they send into space
ReplyDeleteWow- this is something I never thought about before. Hopefully we can figure out a way to keep the debris from becoming a danger to us on Earth if/when it enters our atmosphere again
ReplyDeleteI never realized how polluted space was by humans. It's good thing it'll be pushed off the Earth's orbit though.
ReplyDeleteI find it really sad that we already polluted the earth and now we are polluting space. Nothing is safe from human waste.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this blog. I found it very interesting that there are still space debris from 1966. It's good to know that the booster is not going to hit earth and it will be push away by the sun. This blog was very fascinating!
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