Fiery space debris that hit Earth in November likely from Moon rocket

Did a piece of the Lunar Prospector fly around in space for 17 years before crashing back into Earth? (credit: NASA)

In November, an approximately 1-meter piece of space junk burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere and fell into the Indian Ocean, making a fiery spectacle of itself. At the time space scientists weren't sure about the origin of the object, named WT1190F. Since then, there has been a flurry of activity to try and trace the trajectory of the debris back to its origin.

Now according to a report in Nature, scientists have a leading candidate. The space debris appears likely to have come from the translunar injector of Lunar Prospector, a spacecraft launched by NASA in 1998. This part of the rocket would have boosted the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and toward the Moon.

By comparing observations from telescopes since 2009, scientists found the object had a stretched out path that brought it beyond the Moon's orbit, which was consistent with a Moon rocket. They believe the object only could have survived in the Earth-Moon system for a decade or slightly longer. Additionally, spectra from the debris showed the presence of titanium oxide and hydrogen, which were consistent with the injector's titanium case.

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