Earth's 3rd moon - just trash!

[Jill Strobridge]

Just a follow up from a friend about the 3rd "moon" in case anyone is
interested.  Where's Spaceman Stan when you need him!
jill
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Jill Strobridge <jill at theta-orionis.freeserve.co.uk>
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----- Original Message -----

> Jill Strobridge wrote:
> > This is fun.   Even Cruithne is news to me!
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2251386.stm
>
> Heh, Cruithne is a Trojan asteroid with pretensions (and, okay, a
> captured orbit...)
>
> Looks like this one is what I suspected, a Saturn S-IVB from Apollo 12
> (i.e. the 3rd stage of the Saturn 5; the three stages are known as the
> S-IC, the S-II and the S-IVB - you can see the Apollo 11 Saturn V
being
> prepared at
>
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/ap11ann/kippsphotos/saturn5.ht
ml
> and the very Saturn in question at
> http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/images/pao/AS12/10075395.jpg, along with
two
> birds whose thoughts can probably be summed up as "What the hell is
> _that_?")
>
> There's some good info at the Near Earth Orbit page
> (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/) which has information on the backwards
> tracing of the orbit, which seems to show that the object was in orbit
> around the Sun until last year when it came close enough to the L1
> Lagrange point to be captured by the Earth instead. Also, it seems to
> show that in the early 70s the opposite happened; the sun captured it
> from Earth orbit. There's some nice pictures of the S-IVB just as it
was
> discarded.
>
> Interestingly there's a 20% chance it will impact the moon next year,
> and there's now frantic efforts to try and work out if the ALSEPs
> (Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages) left behind by several
Apollo
> missions, which have seismographs on board, can be powered up again.
> They're nuclear (which is why there was concerns about Apollo 13's
lunar
> module re-entering - it had one attached, which apparently did survive
> reentry and is now at the bottom of an ocean trench) but to save money
> they were shut down in 1977. See
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/807219.asp?0si=-&cp1=1
>
> There's also a 3% chance it will hit Earth and burn up. It would be
_so_
> cool if it came close enough and into a favourable enough orbit that
the
> Shuttle could grab it... now that's what I call archaeology!  Unlikely
> though. :-)
>
> Angus