In September 2002 astronomers discovered this asteroid in an unusual orbit around the Earth this surprised the astronomers because as far as they knew, the only natural object that orbited Earth was the moon and so this strange object couldn't be an asteroid it had to be something that was made by us as it turned out this was in fact the Saturn V third stage which launched the Apollo 12 astronauts to the moon This rocket left Earth in 1969 and went on a crazy Journey unknown to everyone before returning to Earth 30 years later. But what happened to this rocket and why did it end up on such a weird journey? In this video we're going to look at how a tiny error in the Apollo 12 mission sent this rocket stage on a 30-year trip through space only to mysteriously reappear around Earth.
We'll also be giving away this awesome space shuttle canvas print so stick around to the end of the video to see how you could win. The Saturn V rocket had 3 stages. The 1st stage burned for about 2.
5 minutes and got them to an altitude of 61 km The second stage would burn for around 6 minutes taking them higher and faster it was then up to the third and final stage to do a short burn and get the spacecraft into orbit once it was in a stable orbit, the third stage would be fired up again to perform the trans lunar injection burn sending the rocket and crew on a trajectory to intersect the moon. Once the Apollo crew were safely on their way to the moon the third stage would separate and NASA would try to discard it On previous Apollo missions they aimed to place it into an orbit around the sun where it would remain for thousands of years. In order to get into this orbit NASA aimed to meet the moon on its trailing side, where the moon's gravity would slingshot the rocket away from Earth and into a solar orbit For NASA an orbit like this is a good investment because it means the object won't get in the way of future missions, but things didn't quite work out for Apollo 12.
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In order to get rid of Apollo 12's third stage, NASA had to set it on a path to meet the moon around here. But the initial trajectory had it headed toward this side of the Moon and so the third stage needed to do one final maneuver to change its trajectory. In order to complete this maneuver the third stage used its auxiliary propulsion systems.
These were two sets of thrusters at the bottom of the stage that provided yaw, pitch and roll during flight. Despite having to change its position by thousands of kilometers, it actually took very little energy since changing its trajectory so early in the journey would have a big effect once it reached the Moon. At the time of separation the third stage was traveling at around 20,000 kilometers an hour.
In order to change its trajectory it had to slow down by about 140 kilometers an hour. This would delay its approach to the Moon making it arrive at the opposite side. NASA completed the maneuver, but unknown to them it didn't go to plan.
The entire Saturn V rocket was controlled by the instrument unit located above the third stage this had its own internal guidance unit on board which was used to plot the rocket's trajectory. It also had two c-band transponders which would send signals back to ground stations on Earth giving NASA more accurate trajectory data. Once the rocket was safely in orbit NASA could compare this data with the rocket's own data and see if it was following the desired flight path.
If anything was off, they could send a command up to the rocket to correct it. What NASA didn't know was that the tracking system was out by a tiny amount which led them to believe the rocket was traveling faster than it really was, and so in order to get it to the target velocity NASA ended up slowing it down too much. They over corrected by just 40 kilometers an hour, but this was enough to drastically delay its arrival to the Moon causing it to miss by thousands of kilometers.
And so instead of being thrown out into a solar orbit, the third stage ended up in a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth. Over the next 15 months the orbit was constantly stretched and pulled in different directions by the Earth and Moon's gravity. It got stretched all the way out to lagrange point one.
This is a point between Earth and the Sun where the gravitational forces of both bodies cancel out. Once the third stage passed beyond this point, the sun started to have more of an influence. Imagine a steep hill with a car trying to reach the top.
If the car doesn't have enough velocity to reach the top, the hill will drag it back down to the bottom. If it has enough velocity to move past the top it will start to get pulled down by the other side. This is exactly what happened to the third stage.
It passed the lagrange point one hill, and was now being dragged into an orbit around the Sun. In a way it finally achieved what it was meant to achieve, but this orbit around the sun was far from stable. Instead of being accelerated to a solar orbit on the outside of Earth, it had been slowed down into an orbit on the inside of Earth.
Because of this the third stage was now completing its lap around the Sun a little bit quicker than the Earth. This meant it was slowly pulling away. But it was only a matter of time before the third stage would catch back up.
This actually happened in 1986 but it wasn't quite close enough to the L1 point and so it never got pulled into Earth's orbit. The third stage carried on racing around the Sun for another 16 years before the inevitable finally happened. In 2002 the third stage reached its apoapsis just as the Earth came onto the scene.
This time the third stage crossed beyond Earth's L1 point and for the first time in 32 years, the Earth now had more pull on the object than the Sun. Over the course of two months, Earth pulled the third stage into a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth just like the one it was in before. At this point though, astronomers still had no idea what this object was, and so in order to confirm the identity of the object astronomers did spectroscopy observations to determine what it was made of.
Every material reflects light in slightly different ways. More specifically the amount of light that is reflected will differ at each wavelength. And so to determine the material of this object, astronomers took light measurements of the third stage at many different wavelengths which gave them a spectroscopy graph.
With this, they could compare it to other spectroscopy graphs and see if it matched any other materials. It turned out that it was very similar to the spectroscopy graph of white titanium oxide paint. The exact kind that was used on the Saturn V.
Astronomers were also able to trace the object's trajectory back, and found that it left Earth's orbit in 1971. And so with this information astronomers could confidently say that this really was the long last third stage from Apollo 12. Astronomers continued to track the orbit and after just a year it was once again thrown out into an orbit around the Sun.
Calculations made by astronomers showed that it will return to Earth in the mid-40s. This object will spend many more years racing through space, but the laws of physics will always make sure it returns home every now and then. And now time for something really special.
In the next video we'll be giving away this awesome space shuttle canvas print. All you have to do is sign up at the link below and leave a comment about the thing that got you interested in space flight. We will announce the winner in next month's video.
Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.
