Friday 13 November 2020

Earth may have captured a stray 1960s-era rocket booster

Earth has captured a tiny object from its orbit around the sun and will keep it as a temporary satellite for a few months before it escapes back to a solar orbit. But the object is likely not an asteroid; it's probably the Centaur upper stage rocket booster that helped lift NASA's ill-fated Surveyor 2 spacecraft toward the moon in 1966.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-11-earth-captured-stray-1960s-era-rocket.html