🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE An amateur astronomer’s discovery kicked off a Space Age detective story.
S-IVB, seen floating through space, was originally thought to be an asteroid. On September 3, 2002, amateur astronomer Bill Yeung discovered an object that he believed was a never-before-seen asteroid in a rapid orbit around Earth. While it’s easy for massive planets such as Jupiter to frequently capture objects like asteroids and comets, Earth is smaller and has less gravitational oomph with which to influence interplanetary passersby.
But an analysis of recent launches did not identify any possible candidates for the source of the object. Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, tracing back the object’s trajectory, discovered that it had been captured in April 2002 into Earth orbit from an orbit around the sun that was similar to Earth’s.
The massive Saturn V propelled the Apollo astronauts to the moon and later lofted the Skylab Space Station into orbit around Earth. While 18 complete Saturn V rockets were built, only 13 were ever launched . The Saturn V was a three-stage rocket. The first and second stages of the Saturn V fell back to Earth once they were spent.
Further analysis of J002E3 suggested it first left Earth orbit in 1969, narrowing things down to Apollo 9 through 12 .
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