Originally posted by Devino
Could debris from a mission make it around the Moon and back into Earth orbit on its own?
All it has to do is not hit the moon; the moon orbits the earth and without the moon as a target the path of an apollo mission is just a very elongated earth orbit. The real question is whether or not a gravity perturbtion by the moon months later causes it to lower its perigee back into the atmosphere. If not, then it'll continue to orbit indefinitely. In the case of the S-IVBs though, they were ejected into solar orbits if they weren't targeted to hit the moon so that there would be no risk of collision with the command module later on during any course corrections. Those S-IVBs may re-encounter the earth from time to time and be loosely and temporarily recaptured.
Maybe NASA's LCROSS mission actually missed the Moon and this is what we are seeing.
I detected it as being on course only a day before impact, so that's rather unlikely.
[edit on 28-10-2009 by ngchunter]
Its not that far out there is it? 
