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Newly Discovered Object Could be a Leftover Apollo Rocket Stage An analysis of the orbital motion of the newly discovered object J002E3 indicates that it could be a leftover Saturn V third stage from one of the Apollo missions, most likely the Apollo 12 mission, launched on November 14, 1969. The new object was discovered on September 3 by Bill Yeung, who noted that it was moving quite rapidly. Initial orbit computations by the Minor Planet Center indicated that the object was only about twice as far away as the Moon, and was actually in orbit about our planet....

Monday, 21 October, 2002, 16:27 GMT 17:27 UKEarth's little brother found The asteroid was found almost by accident By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Astronomers have discovered the first object ever that is in a companion orbit to the Earth. Asteroid 2002 AA29 is only about 100 metres wide and never comes closer than 3.6 million miles to our planet. But it shares the Earth's orbit around the Sun, at first on one side of the Earth and then escaping to travel along our planet's path around the Sun until it encounters the Earth from the other...

Cat-and-mouse asteroid pulls close to Earth January 03 2003 at 07:25PM Washington - An asteroid playing a cat-and-mouse game with Earth will pull to its closest point in almost a century on Monday before swinging away for another 95 years, Nasa said in a statement. Asteroid 2002 AA29 is like a mouse teasing a cat, approaching Earth first on one side and then on another, without ever making contact or actually passing our planet as the two bodies circle the sun, the astronomers said on Thursday. At just 60m, the tiny asteroid will get within 6 000 000km on Monday....

Earth has acquired a "quasi-moon" -- an asteroid that will encircle our planet for the next couple of years while it orbits the sun on a horseshoe-shaped path, according to a report to be published on Saturday in New Scientist. The asteroid, 2003 YN17, "is probably a chunk of debris" from an impact between a larger space rock and the surface of the moon, the British weekly says. 2003 YN17's orbital plane is roughly the same as the earth's, but its unusual path, compounded by a corkscrew-like track, means that sometimes it is ahead of us and sometimes it is...