Pan-STARRS1 opened within the review the space object which received name 2020 SO can be on September 17, 2020, the Hawaiian observatory Haleakala artificial. Initially, scientists mistook it for a small asteroid. However, further observations of it showed behavior uncharacteristic of such types of objects. According to Paul Chodas, one of the employees of the NASA research center for observing near-Earth objects, he moves too slowly for an asteroid, is in the same plane as the Earth, and also has an almost circular orbit around the Sun, like the Earth. All this indicates that 2020 SO cannot be an asteroid, but is an object of artificial origin.
No, it’s not about aliens. But the real story of 2020 SO may be no less interesting. Some experts suggest that it may be part of a rocket from the time of the lunar race between the United States and the USSR in the mid-60s of the last century.
The dimensions of 2020 SO in length are about 8 meters. About the same length was possessed by the upper stage of the Atlas Centauri launch vehicle (in the photo above), launched on September 20, 1966 as part of the Serveyer-2 space mission (English Surveyor 2), which involved the landing of an unmanned spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. However, the mission was doomed to failure. The initial launch was successful, but the subsequent failure of one of the corrective engines led to a loss of communication with the device, as a result of which an accident occurred on September 22.
A simulation demonstrating the prediction of the trajectory of the 2020 SO object was shared on Twitter by amateur astronomer and physicist Tony Dunn.
According to Paul Chodas, 2020 SO has about the same trajectory along which the part of the launch vehicle launched as part of the lunar mission, orbiting the moon and going into orbit around the Sun, would move. Comparing all the facts, scientists suggested that this is the old Atlas Centauri rocket, or rather one of its steps.
The object will approach Earth in mid-November, then experts plan to study it in more detail and determine what it really is.
