On Feb. 2, the “second moon” will approach Earth for the last Time and then will go into space, never to return to Earth’s orbit. The Virtual Telescope Project, an organization of European astronomy enthusiasts, will hold a farewell ceremony for the moon on the Internet on the evening of Feb. 1.
The “second moon” is an unidentified object that burst into orbit between the Earth and the moon last September. Astronomers first thought it was an asteroid and named it “2020 SO”. Astronomers used to call Earth’s temporary satellites “mini-moons”, so the object became a second moon.
Since then, analysis by NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies has revealed that it was an object made on Earth – a booster for the Centaur rocket used on the 1966 Surveyor 2 mission to the moon. That mission was almost to the moon when one of the three boosters failed to ignite, causing the spacecraft to tumble out of control and crash on the moon on Sept. 23, 1966.
NASA has found that “2020 SO” has flown close to Earth many times in the past few decades.
On Dec. 1 of last year, it flew past the Earth at the closest distance. According to EarthSky.org, Feb. 2 of this year will be its last close, 220,000-kilometer flyby of Earth. This corresponds to 58 percent of the distance between the moon and the Earth.
After that, the object will get farther and farther away from Earth, and in March this year will leave Earth’s orbit completely into space, becoming yet another object orbiting the Sun, never to return to the vicinity of Earth.
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