The program whose objective is to discover asteroids and comets that move in an environment close to our planet, Catalina Sky Survey (CSS), has discovered a strange piece of space debris, which has been baptized as WT1190F that according to the estimates of astronomers will enter in Earth’s atmosphere on November 13 .
Specifically, after the trajectory calculation made by the experts and combining it with other independent observations, the object will reach Earth at 0620 GMT and will fall on the Indian Ocean about 65 kilometers from the southern tip of Sri Lanka . The strange thing about this object is its origin: it comes from beyond the Moon and was not previously registered by the Near-Earth Objects office of the European Space Agency.
Astronomers have discovered that this space debris makes a highly elliptical orbit, swinging twice as far as the Earth-Moon distance. It is barely 1-2 meters in size and its trajectory indicates that it could be a hollow object, perhaps a lost piece from the past (a piece of rocket, panels …).
The study, which has been published in the journal Nature , also indicates that much – or possibly all – of this piece of space debris is likely to be burned upon entering our atmosphere . Be that as it may, scientists will be prepared to obtain all kinds of information from such an event, coordinating the observations together with sea-air vehicles.
