During the early hours of Sunday, a strange light in the sky surprised to a group of young people who were on one of the beaches of Villa La Angostura, a phenomenon so atypical that it presented a triangular halo and lasted a few seconds in the sky night.
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From the NASA explained that this fact responds to the passage of a rocket that belonged to a failed lunar mission in 1966, which was propelled by a Centaur from the 1960s. The NEO (object close to the Earth for its acronym in English) had been discovered in September by astronomers looking for nearby asteroids and was seen this Sunday around 1:30 in the entire Patagonian area.
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According to public the site La Angostura Digital, the information provided by this space agency coincides in the schedule with the story of the photographer, who had all his equipment at hand to portray the image clearly and share his strange vision with the rest of Neuquén.
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The US space agency confirmed the artificial origin of the object through data collected at NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) and orbit analysis from the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Propulsion Laboratory. a NASA jet.
A detailed analysis of the 2020 SO orbit revealed that it had come close to Earth several times over the decades, with a focus in 1966 bringing it close enough to suggest that it may have originated from our planet.
The Centaurus upper stage booster rocket belonged to NASA’s failed 1966 Surveyor 2 mission to the Moon. “Due to the extreme weakness of this object following the CNEOS prediction, it was a difficult object to characterize. We obtained color observations with the Large Binocular Telescope, or LBT, which suggested that 2020 SO was not an asteroid,” Vishnu Reddy, professor associate and planetary scientist at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
While not a perfect match at first, the team persisted in realizing that the discrepancy in the spectrum data could be the result of testing new steel in a laboratory against steel that would have been exposed to harsh space weather conditions. for 54 years. This prompted the group to conduct additional research.
“We knew that if we wanted to compare apples to apples, we would have to try to get spectral data from another Centaurus rocket booster that had been in Earth orbit for many years and then see if it would better match the 2020 SO spectrum,” Reddy said.
“Because of the extreme speed at which Earth-orbiting Centaur thrusters travel through the sky, we knew that it would be extremely difficult to fix the IRTF long enough to get a robust and reliable data set,” he added.
