An artificial "mini moon" from the 1960s will fly very close to Earth again before heading away

According to astronomers, the artificial "mini-moon" must come close to Earth again before leaving our planet's orbit. The mini-moon, dubbed 2020 SO, is actually a piece of space debris from the 1960s that was temporarily pulled by Earth's gravity.

Launch of the Atlas-Centaurus LV on May 30, 1966 with the Surveyor-1 spacecraft (NASA)

The object was first detected on September 17, 2020, by the 71-inch Pan-STARRS1 telescope located on the summit of Mount Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Soon after its discovery, astronomers began to speculate that the object was man-made due to its unusual characteristics. Subsequently, the researchers determined that we are in fact talking about the upper stage of the Atlas-Centaurus rocket launched in 1966 as part of NASA's unsuccessful Surveyor 2 lunar mission.

On December 1, SO 2020 came very close to Earth, as reported by astronomer Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project - he approached our planet at a distance of 50.9 thousand km - this is about 13% of the average distance from Earth to the Moon ... And on February 1, the object will again come very close (by cosmic standards) to the Earth, although a little further than the previous time - the distance will be about 224.5 thousand km. According to Masi, this artifact will remain a satellite of our planet until March 7, when it can finally free itself from the gravitational grasp of the Earth.

“After its extremely close flyby in December, SO 2020 is approaching safely again - this time to say goodbye,” the astronomer wrote on the Virtual Telescope Project (VTP) website. - As we know, this is the Surveyor 2 space mission accelerator, which was temporarily captured by our planet. Soon this artificial mini-moon will leave our environment and slip away into a new orbit around the Sun".

Those wishing to observe the 10-meter object during its last approach to Earth will be able to do this thanks to the live broadcast, which Gianluca Masi will conduct on the VTP website starting at 23:00 Moscow time on February 1.

The Surveyor 2 mission was launched on September 20, 1966, with the help of the Atlas-Centaur launch vehicle. The goal was to study the lunar surface using an unmanned vehicle. But technical problems led the mission control center to lose control of the lunar lander, which eventually fell to the moon.