- J002E3
J002E3 is the designation given to a supposed
asteroid discovered by amateur astronomer Bill Yeung onSeptember 3 ,2002 . Further examination revealed the object was not a rock asteroid but instead theS-IVB third stage of theApollo 12 Saturn V rocket [ [http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/rocket_paint_020918.html SPACE.com - Paint Confirms Earth's New Satellite Not an Asteroid ] ] .When it was first discovered it was quickly found that the object was in an
orbit aroundEarth . Astronomers were surprised at this as the Moon is the only large object in orbit around the Earth [Also believed to orbit the Earth are also so-calledKordylewski cloud s which are large transient concentrations of dust at theTrojan points of the Earth-Moon system which were discovered in1956 by the Polish astronomerKazimierz Kordylewski .] and anything else would have been ejected long ago due to perturbations with the Earth, the Moon and the Sun.Therefore it must have entered into Earth orbit very recently, yet there was no recently-launched spacecraft that matched the orbit of J002E3. One explanation could have been that it was a 30-meter wide piece of rock, but
University of Arizona astronomers found that the object'selectromagnetic spectrum was consistent with whitetitanium dioxide paint, the same paint used byNASA for theSaturn V rockets. Back-tracing its orbit showed that the object had been orbiting the Sun for 31 years and had last been in the vicinity of the Earth in1971 . This seemed to suggest that it was a part of theApollo 14 mission but NASA knew the whereabouts of all hardware used for this mission; the third stage, for instance, was deliberately crashed into the Moon for seismic studies.The only other explanation was that it was the
S-IVB third stage forApollo 12 . NASA had originally planned to direct the S-IVB into a solar orbit, but an extra long burn of theullage motor s meant that venting the remaining propellant in the tank of the S-IVB did not give the rocket stage enough energy to escape the Earth-Moon system, and instead the stage ended up in a semi-stable orbit around the Earth after passing by the Moon inNovember 18 ,1969 . The Apollo 12 S-IVB eventually vanished.It is thought that J002E3 left Earth orbit in
June 2003 , and that it may return to orbit the Earth in about2032 .ee also
*
6Q0B44E , another piece ofspace debris in orbit around the Earth
* 2006 RH120, a meteoroid originally thought to be space debris
*3753 Cruithne Note
External links
* [http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/20sep_mysteryobject.htm Mystery Object Orbits Earth]
* [http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/j002e3.html Animations of the orbit of J002E3]
* [http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/j002e3a.html Animations of the complete Earth encounter of J002E3]
* [http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/images/mysteryobject/gallery/gallery_j002e3.html Gallery of images of J002E3]
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