NASA Spotted An Odd Object Drifting Towards Earth That Has Scientists Scrambling
Researchers were scanning the night sky when something shot across the darkness. The mystery object seemed to be passing through our galaxy, worryingly close to Earth. That meant it could enter the atmosphere and plunge to the ground, potentially causing real damage. It left NASA experts stunned, which is definitely not a good sign...
Experts On The Case
Luckily, one man was on the case. A couple of days after the object was first spotted, Paul Chodas set to work studying this enigmatic phenomenon. And if anyone could get to the bottom of it all, it would be Chodas. As the manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Chodas seriously knows his stuff.
Scientists Were Stumped
At this point, though, the exact identity of the object remained anybody’s guess. Was it an asteroid or a random lump of space junk? How about an alien spaceship from another galaxy? Okay, that third option was, to say the least, a bit of a stretch. But it couldn’t be discounted entirely. At this early stage, scientists had no ready explanation for this unusual vision in the night sky.
Wasn't Acting Like An Asteroid
What was already emerging, however, was that the object was acting in ways not normally seen by your standard asteroid. That’s what Chodas noticed, anyway. Usually, an asteroid follows a path through space that is tilted in relation to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. By contrast, this particular body was on the same plane as our planet’s path.
Slow Moving
Another peculiarity was that 2020 SO, as the object came to be known, was not traveling through the heavens at the type of speed normally observed with asteroids. It was progressing at roughly 1,500mph – much more unhurried than usual. So, Chodas was finding it less and less likely that this was actually an asteroid. But if that was true, then what exactly was this strange visitor?
