They noticed it a few weeks ago and tracked its path, realizing that it will probably splash down in the Indian Ocean off the southern coast of Sri Lanka if it survives the super-heated drop through the atmosphere. Popularly dubbed “WTF”, a shortened version of its designation of WT1190F, the object is thought to likely be a piece of a spent rocket or perhaps a piece of one of the lunar space crafts from NASA.
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Discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in 2013, WT1190F has been observed several times since then by the same team, who have been sharing their data via the US-based Minor Planet Centre (MPC), the global Astronomical Union’s official repository for such observations. This larger object is believed to be man-made space litter and it’s in an odd orbit.
The European Space Agency (ESP) has information on its Near Earth Objects Coordination Center website about the piece of space junk, but says it isn’t big enough to cause any sort of threat to the area.
WTF’s re-entry is a special treat for scientists, as it provides them with the rare opportunity to study the interaction between incoming objects and our atmosphere.
ESA said that while its mass does not pose a risk, the show “will still be spectacular, since for a few seconds the object will become quite bright in the mid-day sky”.
Nature reports the object was previously orbiting far beyond the Moon, “ignored and unidentified”, when a telescope spotted it earlier this month.
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He said that such forecasts about the places on the Earth where space objects would fall have often gone wrong in the past and it is very unlikely that there will be any danger or bad effect on Sri Lanka.
