Momma always said to pick up after yourself. Otherwise, you won't know where your old pieces of junk will end up, and might end up confusing them with asteroids. Astronomers have decided that a near-Earth object that passed by Earth last week is likely a rocket piece, a chunk of metal left behind in the darkness of space while some orbiter or NASA explorer zoomed off on an exciting mission.
Richard Kowalski at the Catalina Sky Survey discovered "2010 KQ," a few-meter-wide something or other, headed for Earth on May 16. Tracked by NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," the something made a relatively close pass to our planet (it was just a bit further out than the moon's orbit) on May 21. Yesterday, NASA announced that the object was likely the upper-stage of a rocket. Why the confusion? First, using spectral analysis, astronomers could see that the ...
