A curious object is about to fly past Earth

Originally posted by Doc Velocity
That's not what the article says. It says the object's projected orbit is closest to the Sun at about the same distance as the orbit of Venus, while its furthest distance is out around the orbit of Mars.

We should keep in mind that this trajectory is subject to error due to a basic lack of information. As per the Applet found on JPL's web site, that I linked, shows that this object, AL30 2010, comes no where near Mars nor the Sun but does orbit close to both Venus and Earth.

With a 365-366 day orbit (1 Earth year),
the semi-major axis, longest diameter of an ellipse, is a little over 1 AU (mean distance from Earth to the Sun),
orbital motion in the same direction as Earth,
an inclination close to that of Venus,
and node crossings close to that of Venus...
I would say that this is evidence that its source was Earth and intended target was Venus (i.e. man made space junk from a Venus mission).
I can't even imagine how improbably the chances are that an asteroid would just so happen to fall into such a orbit with these characteristics. The chances of an object coming even close to Earth is astronomically low let alone following each of these characteristics in such a way and not being noticed until now. I would think that it would take some time to fall into such an orbit and not just happen within the first few orbits.

...a very steep angle relative to the plane of our Solar System.

This thing was coming in on a weird angle, too weird to be a hunk of manmade space junk.

Mercury has an inclination to the ecliptic of just over 7 degrees and Venus is around 3.39 degrees.
AL30 2010 is said to have an inclination (I'm assuming to the ecliptic) of around 3.92 degrees. This is far from a relatively steep angle which is evident from JPL's Applet.
There is very little data to work with so I can only point out what I have found and If there is other information that contradicts this please link it.

it's making the trip from the Sun out to the orbit of Mars and back again in 366 days

From the Sun to Mars?
This is a highly exaggerated estimate in my opinion. Where did you find this information?
Keep in mind that its semi-major axis is 1AU so I don't think that this orbit, as you describe, is even possible according to Kepler's law.

[edit on 1/14/2010 by Devino]

Originally posted by Doc Velocity

 

 

This was a funny post and YOU KNOW IT, it had plenty of approval from viewers. Stop showing your angry political bias by removing perfectly harmless posts.

— Doc Velocity

Originally posted by Devino

Originally posted by Doc Velocity
it's making the trip from the Sun out to the orbit of Mars and back again in 366 days

From the Sun to Mars? This is a highly exaggerated estimate in my opinion. Where did you find this information?

I took that AND the "very steep angle" information from the NASA press release on the 2010 AL30 passage:

NASA: Mystery Object is Natural

This makes it very unlikely that 2010 AL30 is a rocket stage. Furthermore, trajectory extrapolations show that this object cannot be associated with any recent launch and it has not made any close approaches to the Earth since well before the Space Age began.

So, if it's highly exaggerated, blame it on NASA.

— Doc Velocity







[edit on 1/14/2010 by Doc Velocity]

What happened to AL30? Do we know what it was yet? With every google search i only manage to find subjects on 'mystery object about to whizz past earth' with before pictures. But no explanation.
Thanks.

Originally posted by doorhand
What happened to AL30? Do we know what it was yet? With every google search i only manage to find subjects on 'mystery object about to whizz past earth' with before pictures. But no explanation.
Thanks.

I noticed I had flagged this thread a while ago and was just wondering the same thing. Huh. Oh well...maybe someone could just let us know that is was just some random piece of space junk or whatever? Anyone?