Researchers call it sheer coincidence that a newly discovered piece of space junk is officially designated WT1190F. But the letters in the name, which form the acronym for an unprintable expression of bafflement, are an appropriate fit for an object that is as mysterious as it is unprecedented.

Scientists have worked out that WT1190F will plunge to Earth from above the Indian Ocean on 13 November, making it one of the very few space objects whose impact can be accurately predicted. More unusual still, WT1190F was a 'lost' piece of space debris orbiting far beyond the Moon, ignored and unidentified, before being glimpsed by a telescope in early October.

An observing campaign is now taking shape to follow the object as it dives through Earth's atmosphere, says Gerhard Drolshagen, co-manager in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, of the European Space Agency's near-Earth objects office. The event not only offers a scientific opportunity to watch something plunge through the atmosphere, but also tests the plans that astronomers have put in place to coordinate their efforts when a potentially dangerous space object shows up. "What we planned to do seems to work," Drolshagen says. "But it's still three weeks to go."

WT1190F was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey, a programme based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, aimed at discovering asteroids and comets that swing close to Earth. At first, scientists didn't know what to make of this weird body. But they quickly computed its trajectory after collecting further observations and unearthing 2012 and 2013 sightings from telescope archives, says independent astronomy-software developer Bill Gray, who has been tracking the debris with astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

WT1190F travels a highly elliptical orbit, swinging out twice as far as the Earth - Moon distance, Gray says. Gray's calculations show that it will hit Earth at 6:20 utc, hitting the ocean about 65 kilometres off the southern tip of Sri Lanka. Much, if not all, of it will burn up in the atmosphere, but "I would not necessarily want to be going fishing directly underneath it", Gray says.

The object is only 1 to 2 metres in size, and its trajectory shows that it has a low density, and is perhaps hollow. That suggests an artificial object, "a lost piece of space history that's come back to haunt us", says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It could be a spent rocket stage or panelling shed by a recent Moon mission. It is also possible that the debris dates back decades, perhaps even to the Apollo era. An object seen orbiting Earth in 2002 was eventually identified as a discarded segment of the Saturn V rocket that launched the second mission to land men on the Moon.

WT1190F is a rare breed of space object. Researchers are currently tracking only 20 or so artificial objects in distant orbits, says Gareth Williams, an astronomer at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are probably many more such pieces of space junk in orbit around the Earth - Moon system, but it is impossible to say how many. No others are known to have made the return trip to Earth, although it is likely that some have done so without anyone noticing, McDowell says.

Drolshagen plans to get spectral information on the object, which may help to identify it, and he hopes to coordinate impact observations conducted onboard ships or aeroplanes. But that may be the end of the concerted effort to study this class of object. Unlike near-Earth asteroids, space debris that flies well away from Earth has not commanded significant amounts of funding or attention. And the US military, which tracks space debris, says that it lacks the ability to identify WT1190F or to predict its path.

"There is no official, funded effort to do tracking of deep-Earth orbits the way we track low-Earth orbit," McDowell says. "I think that has to change".

More,
You may want to check out BpEarthWatch - asteroids & CERN
(3 new YouTube videos also)

thanks, i go to BP all the time to look at the satellite pics of the solar system... SOHO is my fav, and the LASCO C3 images/movies...

http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/soho_movie_theater

another one you might be interested in is the RSOE EDIS website, shows realtime emergencies/ different things happening around the globe...

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php

Will be interesting to see what it is.

I read a few days ago about two suns (stars) joining together somewhere. In some galaxy millions of light years away. They spotted it by chance. According to what I read it's very rare occurrence.

I can't post the link but it was on newsweek.com/rare merging stars soon to explode.

Very interesting.

I used to use the RSOE site a fair amount, but they changed their access policies and the information was not as frequently updated as it had been in the past.

I'd use it if I suspected something like an ebola outbreak that wasn't being reported in the mainstream media, to see the number of reported cases and the dead/injured stats. Would be useful in planning to get outta Dodge in a timely fashion.

If this object is 1-2 meters, I'm surprised it will survive re-entry such that it merits tracking. The concern would be the speed it hits the water at as to it causing a localized disturbance in the ocean.

Tsunami possibility? Highly doubtful based on the low mass, and I don't see this thing doing mach 6, as its distortion from heat of re-entry makes it less aerodynamic and will slow it down.

Gotta wonder if it manages to hit a ship, or some poor schmuck suntanning on his boat though. Extremely hot metal banging into a LNG carrier? Ouch.

i saw that too, seems like there's a lot they are finding with the new array in Chile, the biggest in the world now... just wait till the James Webb space telescope gets launched, will make Hubble look like a toy in comparison...

Pity they couldn't divert it on top of Isis, it would save a few shilling.

It's one of the turds flushed from Apollo 16.

Determined by a 1978 interview with Charles "Dookey" Duke when he said "I left a little of myself out there, a piece of me is floating through the cosmos, my contribution on behalf of mankind."

a two meter turd?

no gravity and he saved it all for one go before reentry

Can't wait for the movie.

"Attack of the Killer Space Turd"


"Plan Space Turd from Outer Space"