[FPSPACE] FW: [lunar-update] One more time - Earth Second Moon or "Other Moon"

[LARRY KLAES]

>From: Larry Kellogg <larry.kellogg at gmail.com>
>To: lunar-update at news.altair.com
>Subject: [lunar-update] One more time - Earth Second Moon or "Other Moon"
>Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 20:12:29 -0700
>
>One more time - Earth Second Moon or "Other Moon"
>
>Well something like this has happened before.
>
>Remember the Apollo 12 booster stage that visited us?
>http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2790
>- LRK -
>
>==============================================================
>http://skytonight.com/news/Earth_Second__Moon.html
><http://skytonight.com/news/Earth_Second__Moon.html>
>Earth's "Other Moon"
>April 17, 2007
>by Roger W. Sinnott
>Last September, when a tiny asteroid drifted into Earth’s vicinity, our
>planet’s gravity captured it. The meter-size object, designated 6R10DB9,
>is now making its third wide swing around Earth. It was quite faint,
>magnitude 19.3, when discovered September 14th with the 0.68-meter
>(27-inch) Schmidt telescope of the Catalina Sky Survey
><http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/> in Arizona, and it won’t get much
>brighter than that.
>
>“Certainly 6R10DB9, with a geocentric eccentricity less than 1, is
>currently orbiting the Earth ,” says Gareth V. Williams of the Minor
>Planet Center <http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html>, “although it
>will leave the Earth-Moon system after next June’s perigee.” Williams’s
>calculations show that prior to capture 6R10DB9 was in a low-inclination
>orbit around the Sun with a period of about 11 months. That’s typical of
>the paths followed by spent rocket boosters left over from space
>missions of the 1960s and 70s.
>Snip
>
>When 6R10DB9 makes its final and closest pass in June, “threading the
>needle” and dipping just inside the Moon’s orbit, astronomers will get
>their best view of it for years to come. Spectroscopic studies with
>large telescopes, for example, could help to reveal its true nature.
>Snip
>==============================================================
>
>So that is at least two visitors that have been caught aah, “threading
>the needle”.
>Check out the link and see the expected loop de loops.
>
>Then consider what one might be able to do if you could just do some
>slight vector adjustments and circularize the orbit and do some mining
>if this is an asteroid.
>
>Also consider what will happen to the booster stages of the upcoming
>lunar launches to the Moon.
>
>Put them into orbit around the Sun, crash them into the Moon, or let
>them fall back to Earth to burn up.
>
>Hmmmm, as a kid I shot an arrow into the air. Came back on our shingle
>roof. Dad wasn't happy.
>Hope we do a better job of shooting arrows into the air in the future.
>
>Thanks for looking up with me.
>
>Larry Kellogg
>
>Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
>BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
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>
>==============================================================
>http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2790
>Orbit shows "second Moon" may be Apollo junk
>
>     * 16:10 12 September 2002
>     * NewScientist.com news service
>     * Will Knight
>
>A mystery object recently found orbiting the Earth is more likely to be
>a used rocket booster from an Apollo spacecraft than a tiny second Moon.
>
>NASA scientists have now analysed the object's orbit, which "indicates
>that it could be a leftover Saturn V third stage from one of the Apollo
>missions, most likely the Apollo 12 mission, launched on 14 November 1969".
>
>The computer simulations were carried out by Donald Yeomans and Paul
>Chodas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They show that the object's
>orbit is consistent with a booster that circled the Earth in the 1960's
>or 1970's, was then captured by the Sun and finally returned to Earth
>orbit in April 2002.
>
>The object was spotted on 3 September by an astronomer in Arizona and
>was initially thought to be an asteroid passing the Earth. But further
>observations revealed that a 50-day Earth orbit at an altitude rising
>from 300,000 to 800,000 kilometres.
>
>Snip
>==============================================================
>
>WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
>
>==============================================================
>
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