NASA confirmed recently that the Near-Earth object called 2020
SO is the rocket booster helping to lift up the agency’s Surveyor spacecraft during
its journey to the moon in 1966.

The confirmation from scientists came after more than 170 measurements
of the object’s position were taken and analysed for more than three months
from around the world in several observatories.

The Surveyor-2 spacecraft, in an attempt to land on the
lunar surface, wherein one thruster out of three failed, resulting in the spacecraft
spinning and ultimately crashing on the surface.

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The attempt of the mission was to observe the surface of the
moon before the beginning the Apollo missions, which eventually put the first
man on the moon.

Even though the spacecraft crashed, the rocket booster
reportedly ventured into an unknown orbit around the sun, and come close to the
earth in the last few decades.

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Initially, the object was thought to be an asteroid.

NASA upon observation, however, concluded that the orbit of
the object was not that of a normal asteroid as 2020 SO’s orbit “was at about
the same distance, nearly circular, and in orbital plane that almost exactly
matched that of our planet – highly unusual for a natural asteroid”.

On November 8, the booster drifted into the Earth’s orbit in
a region called the Hill Sphere, and is predicted to stay here for four months
before taking on a new orbit around the Sun in March 2021.