{"id":125566,"date":"2020-12-03T21:25:17","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T18:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/mystery-object-is-54-year-old-rocket-not-asteroid-2\/"},"modified":"2020-12-03T21:25:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T18:25:17","slug":"mystery-object-is-54-year-old-rocket-not-asteroid-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/mystery-object-is-54-year-old-rocket-not-asteroid-2\/","title":{"rendered":"#Mystery object is 54-year-old rocket, not asteroid"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Mystery object is 54-year-old rocket, not asteroid<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Enlarge Image<\/p>\n
\n \"An<\/div>\n

An Atlas Centaur 7 rocket on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Fla. A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is the Centaur upper stage of this 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020. <\/span>
\n AP<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\n

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. \u2014 A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.<\/p>\n

The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery in September. But NASA\u2019s top asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, quickly suspected it was the Centaur upper rocket stage from Surveyor 2, a failed 1966 moon-landing mission. Size estimates had put it in the range of the old Centaur, which was about 32 feet long and 10 feet in diameter.<\/p>\n

Chodas was proven right after a team led by the University of Arizona\u2019s Vishnu Reddy used an infrared telescope in Hawaii to observe not only the mystery object, but \u2014 just on Tuesday \u2014 a Centaur from 1971 still orbiting Earth. The data from the images matched.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s news<\/a> was super gratifying!,\u201d Chodas said via email. \u201cIt was teamwork that wrapp<\/a>ed up this puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The object formally known as 2020 SO entered a wide, lopsided orbit around Earth last month and, on Tuesday, made its closest approach at just over 31,000 miles. It will depart the neighborhood in March, shooting back into its own orbit around the sun. Its next return: 2036.<\/p>\n

\"Technicians
Technicians work on an Atlas Centaur 7 rocket at Cape Canaveral, Fla.<\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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“#Mystery object is 54-year-old rocket, not asteroid” Enlarge Image An Atlas Centaur 7 rocket on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Fla. A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is the Centaur upper stage of this 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020. AP CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. \u2014 A mysterious object…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":125567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/asteroid-2.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[82534,72173,5017,5026,76015],"class_list":["post-125566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-12-3-20","tag-asteroids","tag-astronomy","tag-nasa","tag-rockets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}