Posted by - What it was: WT1190F, a small piece of space debris orbiting the Earth since at least 2009.
- When it fell: on 13 November 2015 at 6:18 UTC.
- Where: in the Indian Ocean, about 100 km from Galle, Sri Lanka.
- What it really was: probably part of a rocket stage from the Lunar Prospector mission, launched in 1998.
That’s right, astronomers have calculated that the Earth will be hit on the 13th of next month by an object orbiting our planet.
The UFO that will hit the Earth
This object, called WT1190F or UDA34A3 or UW8551D, was discovered in February 2013 by the Catalina Sky Survey, then lost and found again in November of the same year.
On the 3rd of this month it was spotted again and seems to be a piece of a satellite, low in density and hollow inside, but it is still not known exactly which one, making this object a true unidentified flying object. Its density, about a tenth of that of water, is too low for a natural object: according to European Space Agency astronomers, it could be an empty fuel tank.
No need to panic, though: the UFO in question is small and will probably burn up almost entirely in the atmosphere, ending up on 13 November at 06:20 UTC off the coast of Sri Lanka.
This piece of “space junk” is one of very few objects whose exact day of impact with the Earth could be predicted well in advance.
The UFO that will hit the Earth will give scientists a great opportunity to study an object falling from space, and to test the plans astronomers have devised for dealing with a dangerous object falling to Earth. To see whether they work, though, we will have to wait another 16 days.
Update: how it went
On 13 November 2015, at 6:18 UTC, WT1190F entered the atmosphere at 11 kilometres per second, exactly as predicted, and fell into the ocean about 100 km from Galle, in southern Sri Lanka. From the ground almost nothing could be seen because of the rain, but the International Astronomical Center and the UAE Space Agency had chartered a jet which, from above the clouds, managed to film the fireball, clearly visible to the naked eye.
By studying its orbit, astronomers concluded that our UFO was most likely a piece of the rocket stage that in 1998 sent NASA’s Lunar Prospector probe towards the Moon. Before falling, it had been trapped for years in a very elongated orbit around the Earth, reaching almost twice the distance of the Moon.
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