WTF? Researchers have spotted an object that they expect to enter Earth's atmosphere. It could just be space junk or it could be a natural body. Scientists now believe they can predict when and where it will make contact with the atmosphere - and if poses a danger for humans.
The unknown object has been dubbed "WTF" - a riff on its name, WT1190F, and the mysterious path it is taking.
Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) detected an object on Oct. 3 during their typical scans for near-Earth objects that could potentially penetrate the atmosphere of our "big blue dot." Astronomers then realized that they had imaged that same object in 2013, according to a press release from CSS. By comparing the two images, they determined that the object was space junk and - based on the object's orbit - that it will enter Earth's atmosphere on Nov. 13 over the Indian Ocean, near Sri Lanka.
"We're not 100 percent sure it's artificial, but we're trying to solve that over the next couple of nights," Lowell Observatory planetary astronomer Nick Moskovitz said. "Its orbit shows us that the object will undergo a close encounter with Earth this week, so we'll be able to collect data on it."
"Artificial objects can have a coat of paint on their surfaces, and oftentimes that paint has titanium oxide in it," he added. "This does not occur naturally, so if the object's spectrum indicates the presence of titanium oxide, we can know it's definitively artificial."
Moskovitz will continue to observe the object at the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope in Chile. He expects this particular object to be about three to six feet in diameter. "We don't know what it is so we don't know its shape and how it's going to fragment," he said. "A piece of a solar panel, for instance, would behave differently than a booster tank. There is certainly the possibility that pieces could make it to the ground, though I think it's unlikely."
Millions of pieces of space junk orbit Earth, according to NASA. Of these, about 500,000 are the size of a marble or larger, and 20,000 are larger than a softball. This increasing population of debris poses a threat to spacecraft such as the International Space Station. The Department of Defense's Space Surveillance Network tracks those pieces that measure two inches or larger, but up to this point no one has accurately predicted the entry point into the atmosphere of those whose orbits have decayed.
"This is like a controlled experiment," Moskovitz said. "We generally can't predict when asteroids or other meteor parent bodies are going to hit Earth and so we can't plan observations of these events. This event, though, we can prepare for. Observing it will allow us to gain a better understanding of how Earth's atmosphere is processing material as it comes through. This will help us gain some insight into what is actually making it to the ground and how that represents the asteroids out there."
