Mystery Object Discovered in Earths Orbit

OK, couldn't resist posting this for obvious reasons, but this is fascinating whatever the case may be.

MYSTERY OBJECT: Yesterday, astronomers in Arizona, New Mexico and Spain, all hunting for near-Earth asteroids, discovered a "mystery object" orbiting Earth. Temporarily named "9U01FF6," it is small and in an elongated, 31-day orbit. Experts say it is probably a piece of an Apollo-era Moon mission. We'll get a closer look on Oct. 29th when it zips past Earth about 82,000 km (0.2 lunar distances) away. Advanced amateur astronomers can find it using this ephemeris.

www.spaceweather.com...

Haha, have it folks. Do we say it's swinging round for another orbit ready to land next month?

But really, this is cool.

Well, with all the junk orbiting Earth, I don't see why this would be a surprise...


Edit :
Anyone knows the size of so-said item ? Just in case, maybe it's the first step to the 27th of november disclosure ?

[edit on 27-10-2009 by Jalis]

Very interesting indeed! I look forward to reading more on this.

Well if it is anything important , you can bet Nasa will have the picture doctored before us surfs are allowed to see it. 2 days till it comes back around?

Those who have a nice telescope need to be looking for this. Could be nothing, might be everything.

s&f

I think they are saying it's a geocentric orbit ? That's why they're thinking Apollo?
Hmmph... took em 40 years to spot it? I'd much prefer a spaceship or secret space station thanks.

[edit on 27-10-2009 by squiz]

Originally posted by Jalis
Well, with all the junk orbiting Earth, I don't see why this would be a surprise...

Correct, mostly... (at least IMHO)

the thing that has me a little.. wondering... is why the big enough deal?

And why make a point to say that it was spotted by multiple observatories simultaneously?


Beyond that.. curiousity.. sure, no surprise at all that there'd be massive hunks of junk floating around out there lol

Wow and I thought it took millions of Dollars and hundreds of man hours to develop technology to find a stable orbit , plus not to mention the fuel needed on the item to make minute adjustments to maintain said orbit, only to have a 40 year old piece of space junk from the 'apollo' landing era floating in an elipitical orbit, OI NASA just fire into space old booster rockets and wait 40 years for it to settle into stability or crash into the Earth.
I know asteroids and space debris dont have fuel but they have at least the time to settle into reliable orbits .


[edit on 27/10/09 by DataWraith]

I notice they say Apollo era, meaning it could be from NASA or Russia, so don't start blaming NASA just yet!

There could be a possibility that it has been slowly re-entering our atmosphere, it may now be close enough to become a hazard.

I guess we might know more on the 29th!

I don't know who said it might be a piece of Apollo junk but I am quite sure every piece of Apollo stuff would be accounted for.

Also there is the agency that tracks all the space junk and from what I understand very small pieces.. so it seems very odd that something would suddenly show up they are apparently unaware of.

Not that strange, IMO. Bits and pieces of the Apollo program have been found in strange places/orbits from time to time, if my memory serves me. Just hoping it's not something from the RORSAT program that's decided to leave its junkyard orbit. You know, nuclear reactors on board, that kind of mess.

[edit on 27/10/2009 by Voiceoftreason]

[edit on 27/10/2009 by Voiceoftreason]

Anyone remember this? from 2002.
It's not the first time. I find the comments very curious though.

J002E3 is the designation given to a supposed asteroid discovered by amateur astronomer Bill Yeung on September 3, 2002. Further examination revealed the object was not a rock asteroid but instead the S-IVB third stage of the Apollo 12 Saturn V rocket.[1]

When it was first discovered it was quickly found that the object was in an orbit around Earth. Astronomers were surprised at this as the Moon is the only large object in orbit around the Earth[2] and anything else would have been ejected long ago due to perturbations with the Earth, the Moon and the Sun.

Therefore it must have entered into Earth orbit very recently, yet there was no recently-launched spacecraft that matched the orbit of J002E3. One explanation could have been that it was a 30-meter wide piece of rock, but University of Arizona astronomers found that the object's electromagnetic spectrum was consistent with white titanium dioxide paint, the same paint used by NASA for the Saturn V rockets. Back-tracing its orbit showed that the object had been orbiting the Sun for 31 years and had last been in the vicinity of the Earth in 1971. This seemed to suggest that it was a part of the Apollo 14 mission but NASA knew the whereabouts of all hardware used for this mission; the third stage, for instance, was deliberately crashed into the Moon for seismic studies.

The only other explanation was that it was the S-IVB third stage for Apollo 12. NASA had originally planned to direct the S-IVB into a solar orbit, but an extra long burn of the ullage motors meant that venting the remaining propellant in the tank of the S-IVB did not give the rocket stage enough energy to escape the Earth-Moon system, and instead the stage ended up in a semi-stable orbit around the Earth after passing by the Moon in November 18, 1969. The Apollo 12 S-IVB eventually vanished.

It is thought that J002E3 left Earth orbit in June 2003, and that it may return to orbit the Earth in about 2032.

en.wikipedia.org...

It's Just space junk popping in for a quick visit.

reply to post by squiz

Mystery Object Discovered in Earths Orbit

Yup, prolly just space junk of an all-too Earthly origin. But S&F for taking note and sharing.

Who knows?

Very interesting, considering that the ISS and many other known terrestrial objects have to be continually "bumped" back up in orbit to keep from reentry.

Great find, thank you!

Originally posted by expat2368
I don't know who said it might be a piece of Apollo junk but I am quite sure every piece of Apollo stuff would be accounted for.

It certainly isn't. We still don't know where most of the SLA panels are from the S-IVB stages, and the few S-IVB stages that didn't slam into the moon went into solar orbits where they are mostly unaccounted for. One of the LEM ascent stages was also blasted into solar orbit where it currently resides unseen. I'm currently working to calculate the likely location of the missing bay 4 panel from Apollo 13's explosion. Hopefully I'll find it to be in earth orbit, in which case I can relocate it. I just hope these people didn't beat me to the punch.

reply to post by argentus


That's because those objects are in low earth orbits. An orbit with a period of 31 days would deteriorate very slowly over thousands of years unless its periapsis were very low.

There must be hundreds of members of ATS capable of checking this object out and giving us a heads up on what it actually is.

Looking forward to seeing your results guys!

reply to post by fanthorpe


It's only magnitude 17-19. That makes it a long exposure-only object for most telescopes, requiring a good camera coupled with active tracking as well as sizable optical aid (big telescope). There's no way hundreds of ATS members have that kind of equipment. It would be a bit of a challenge even for me.

[edit on 27-10-2009 by ngchunter]

reply to post by ngchunter


That's absolutely fair enough, I know I have neither the knowledge or equipment to pull it off, but the reason why I said that in the first place was because the article said; "Advanced amateur astronomers can find it using this ephemeris."

While I appreciate that perhaps "hundreds" is an exaggerated figure, somebody here must be capable, at least I hope so, because this sounds exciting to me.

Originally posted by expat2368
I don't know who said it might be a piece of Apollo junk but I am quite sure every piece of Apollo stuff would be accounted for.

Also there is the agency that tracks all the space junk and from what I understand very small pieces.. so it seems very odd that something would suddenly show up they are apparently unaware of.

¥ Quite right.They must keep careful track of all the debris to avoid collisions with present missions.I have no idea what this might be but doubt its from apollo.

Originally posted by AgentX09
¥ Quite right.They must keep careful track of all the debris to avoid collisions with present missions.I have no idea what this might be but doubt its from apollo.

No -- they only need to track objects in near-Earth orbits so as to avoid collisions. The object in question has a 31-day orbit. They are not tracking debris that far away from the Earth. There is no reason to do so (yet).

It is a known fact that there are definitely untracked pieces from the Apollo program out there somewhere (like, as ngchunter said, the S-IVB 3rd stage and the panels from the S-IVB), and some of those pieces could be in a very wide Earth orbit.

I'm not saying that it definitely is Apollo equipment, but there is also no reason to doubt that it could easily be Apollo equipment.

[edit on 10/27/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]