The object had garnered interest in the planetary science
community due to its size and unusual orbit and was studied by observatories
around the world, according to an official release.
Using data
collected at NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) and orbit analysis from
the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, scientists have confirmed that Near-Earth
Object (NEO) 2020 SO is, in fact, a 1960's-Era Centaur rocket booster.
The object,
discovered in September by astronomers searching for near-Earth asteroids from
the NASA-funded Pan-STARRS1 survey telescope on Maui, garnered interest in the
planetary science community due to its size and unusual orbit and was studied
by observatories around the world, according to an official release.
Further analysis
of 2020 SO's orbit revealed the object had come close to Earth a few times over
the decades, with one approach in 1966 bringing it close enough to suggest it
may have originated from Earth. Comparing this data with the history of
previous NASA
missions, Paul Chodas, CNEOS director, concluded 2020 SO could be the Centaur
upper stage rocket booster from NASA's ill-fated 1966 Surveyor 2 mission to the
Moon.
Equipped with this
knowledge, a team led by Vishnu Reddy, an associate professor and planetary
scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona,
performed follow-up spectroscopy observations of 2020 SO using NASA's IRTF on
Maunakea, Hawai'i.
"Due to
extreme faintness of this object following CNEOS prediction it was a
challenging object to characterise" said Reddy. "We got colour
observations with the Large Binocular Telescope, or LBT, that suggested 2020 SO
was not an asteroid."
Through a series
of follow-up observations, Reddy and his team analyzed the 2020 SO's
composition using NASA's IRTF and compared the spectrum data from the 2020 SO
with that of 301 stainless steel, the material Centaur rocket boosters were
made of in the 1960's.
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