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It's Baaaack...
Earth has a new satellite - for a while, anyway. In November of 1969, Apollo
12 blasted off for the Moon with crewmembers Alan Beam, Pete Conrad and Richard
Gordon. It left behind, among other things, the 3rd stage of the Saturn V rocket
that boosted it into space. In 1971, that 3rd stage left the Earth's orbit to position
itself in a Lagrangian point orbit (a place where the Earth's and Sun's gravitational
attraction is nearly equal), where it remained until April of 2002. Canadian amateur
astronomer Bill Yeung spotted the new satellite in September of that year and after
some help from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, confirmed it's identity using spectral
techniques that recognized the titanium oxide paint on the object's surface. Alas,
the 3rd stage will leave our orbit again in June of 2003, and probably won't return
until the mid-2040s. I'll be in my 80s then - scary!
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