There’s a piece of space garbage headed for Earth next month

WT1190F was first spotted by astronomers in 2013 but was subsequently lost, until recently.

It is said to collide with Earth, whatever bits of it that will not burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, at about 6.15am on November 13 in the Indian ocean around 40 miles off the southern tip of Sri Lanka.

The unknown object was rediscovered by astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey, based at the University of Arizona earlier this month. The UFO also seems to be hollow and bent. Unlike near-Earth asteroids, man-made objects that are close to us are not properly monitored.

The disruptive gravity of the Sun and Moon are thought to have kicked it into a highly elliptical orbit, far outside the Moon’s, which has put it on a collision course with Earth.

WT1190F’s entry will give astronomers across the globe the chance to test out the network they’ve established amongst themselves in case a more risky space object sets its course for Earth.

This means what we’re dealing with can’t be a regular old chunk of space rock, so WT1190F is this thing? This suggests it could be anything from a piece of panelling, shed by a recent Moon mission, to an Apollo booster. “An object seen orbiting Earth in 2002, was eventually determined to be discarded segment of Saturn V rocket that launched the first men to land on the Moon”. As Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told Nature News, it could be a “lost piece of space history come back to haunt us”, perhaps an old rocket fragment from the Apollo era. “I think that has to change”.