Scrap space will fall tomorrow on earth: perhaps is the “Snoopy” Apollo 10 – The Messenger

It could be ‘Snoopy’, the lunar module of Apollo 10, the space junk that tomorrow morning, November 13, will fall into the Indian Ocean. I am convinced astronomers of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) who have observed with the telescope of Loiano, near Bologna.

The impact with the atmosphere is expected at 7.19 (Italian time). Scrap “should burn in the atmosphere, but could survive fragments which could end up in the water,” said Hector Perozzi, operations manager at the Center for Coordination Neo (Near Earth Objects), the European Space Agency (Esa). Any fragments should fall into an area a hundred kilometers south of Sri Lanka.

“A plane carrying researchers from NASA and ESA – added Perozzi – follow the ‘ impact with the atmosphere. ” The goal is to study the shining path, which will provide guidance on the materials that make up the scrap, to trace with precision to its identity. Discovered in February 2013, WT1190F was soon identified as space junk, but still it is not clear what it is.

From orbit that extended beyond the Moon, color, shape and length of the drum about three meters, INAF researchers are convinced that it is just a protagonist of the conquest of the moon, a piece of which had gone missing for a long time: the lunar module of Apollo 10 launched in 1969 to try the maneuver moon landing. But experts do not rule out that it might be a scrap of other lunar missions, those Russian Chinese and Indian.
         

             Thursday, November 12, 2015, 15:55 – Last Updated: 15:56
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