How to see a UFO that may be a space junk flying near Earth today

The moon shouldn’t be so jealous. Earth has another satellite now, but it’s just a temporary coup. The exact identity of the object, called 2020 SO, is still an outstanding question, but you can watch it on Monday, November 30, when it gets closer to Earth. The Virtual Telescope project will broadcast the flyby live.

The force of Earth’s gravity captured the object in the orbit of our planet earlier this month, making 2020 SO a kind of small moon.

Usually we do We would expect an object like this to be an asteroidAnd there are a lot of those who fly in space. But the 2020 SO might have a more mundane identity. The 2020 SO orbit around the Sun – which is very similar to Earth’s – convinced researchers that it was probably not a rock. But it is actually a piece of junk space From NASA’s mission.

The closest object approach to our planet will be on December 1st. The virtual telescope project will be presented Live Streaming kicks off at 2 PM PDT on Nov 30.

The founder of the virtual telescope project Gianluca Masi was already able to capture a view of the small body on November 22. It looks like a dot on a background of stars.

Scientists with NASA JPL’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) Analyze the 2020 SO path and track it in time.

“One potential pathway for the 2020 SO is to bring the object very close to the Earth and the Moon in late September 1966,” CNEOS Director Paul Chodas said in a statement to NASA earlier in November. “It was like Eureka’s moment when a quick examination of the launch dates of the Lunar missions showed a match for the Surveyor 2. mission.”

NASA’s ill-fated Surveyor 2 lander ended up crashing on the surface of the moon, but the boosted Centaur rocket escaped into space.

NASA expects the 2020 SO to continue in Earth orbit until March 2021 when it enters into a new orbit around the Sun. The Agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, A. Visible to the body’s journey around the Earth.

The upcoming close approach should give astronomers a chance to contact the formation of SO 2020 and tell us if it is really a leftover from the 1960s.

Even with the telescope viewing, the 2020 SO should look like a bright region of light traveling against the darkness in space. The cool thing is to get a chance to see a piece of space history going back to its ancient lands.