There is lots of man-made space junk but WT1190F is the first ever to crash into Earth.
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Most, if not all, of the object is expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, and whatever’s left will hurtle into the Indian Ocean. The origin of the junk is unclear but experts believe that it is the remnants of one of the Apollo missions.
The piece of junk could actually be a really cool historical artifact.
An unidentified piece of space debris originating from beyond the Moon is giving astronomers the rare chance to observe an object on a collision course with Earth.
Johnathan McDowell, astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said it was ‘a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us’.
Nature News suggested that it could be a piece of rocket from a recent space mission – possibly even from Saturn V (above), the first rocket to launch astronauts to the moon. It’ll also be a good opportunity to test the systems that are now in place to protect against more harmful space debris in the future.
The object, named WT1190F, is unique in that its trajectory has been unusually easy for scientists to determine; with most space objects, accurately pinpointing a date of impact is hard.
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The odd object was discovered in early October by the Catalina Sky Survey, a project meant to provide early warning of approaching comets and asteroids. Gray’s calculations show that it will hit the Earth at 6:20 UTC, falling about 65 kilometres off the southern tip of Sri Lanka. Let’s just hope they don’t ruin a whale’s day.
