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There is certainly evidence to support the idea that they would give a politically correct answer as if you go to the Google news paper web site that I linked you to you can read many other news paper reports of the discovery and some quotes from the Profs from NASA saying, "WE DON'T WANT ANYONE GETTING EXCITED ABOUT THIS BECAUSE THIS BODY IS VERY FAR AWAY !", so they were ALREADY trying to deflect TOO MANY GOOD QUESTIONS !
Now some papers NOTED that there was an uproar in the populous over this story, and soon afterwards they SAY IT WAS A MISTAKE, somehow they did not find anything, so wether it was a mistake or not you know politics took over the story right after it was released.
You are working with numbers that the NASA scientists posted with the original announcement of the discovery, right after the original discovery. I have heard from astronomers on talk show radio that it takes at least 6 months, and they prefer 9 months to a year of watching a new object to get its path in space.
This certainly makes sense as shooting a laser at it and then measuring the light coming back, a direct measurement, would require 8+ years if it were that far away. Triangulation, which is what I think they use can be done quickly but gets better with time A LOT OF TIME !