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SpaceX's rocket booster that sent the Intuitive Machines IM-1 lunar lander on its way in February almost was incorrectly classified earlier today as an asteroid set to orbit the Earth for a couple of years. The Falcon 9's first stage booster for this mission lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida last month, and it became the first booster of the rocket family in years to be expended by SpaceX. SpaceX's decision to not recover the booster meant that the rocket would meet its end after 20 flights, which included a lunar lander for Intuitive Machines that launched in February.
This launch proved to be quite important earlier today, as tracking parameters set after its lunar lander launch led its rocket being incorrectly identified as an orbiting asteroid.
Rocket Likely To Be Falcon 9 Second Stage Mistaken For Orbiting Asteroid
After SpaceX launched the European satellite mission, we reported that the Falcon 9 rocket might crash land back on Earth and become the first rocket in its family to crash after being expended in more than a year.
One of the rockets for this mission was initially cataloged by astronomers earlier today, and at the time, they incorrectly concluded that it was, in fact, an asteroid orbiting the Earth. However, after careful analysis and some changes to the tracking system, members of the minor planet monitoring list (MPML) have concluded that instead of a newly discovered second moon orbiting the Earth, the object is actually SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. The Falcon 9 is made of a first stage booster and a second stage, and it is likely that the booster that the astronomers are referring to is the second stage.
It was initially cataloged as an asteroid, 2024 JV8, with the path picked up by astronomer, astrophysicist and journalist Adrien Coffinet. Incorrect readings for the data also led it to become part of the minor planet electronic circular (MPEC) according to the researcher who had tracked the Falcon 9 during the Intuitive Machines IM-1 launch.
Bill J. Gray has just sent to MPML that 2024 JV8 = 2024-030B = IM-1 booster https://t.co/r384tqQSL7
— Adrien Coffinet (@AdrienCoffinet) May 10, 2024
Coffinet announced the MPEC categorization in the MPM groups and shared that based on the distance readings on February 20th and 21st, it appeared that either the object was traveling to Earth from the Moon after being ejected. He wondered whether it also meant that instead of being a second moon, the asteroid was, in fact, something launched to the Moon from Earth.
In response to Coffinet's announcement, the researcher, Bill Gray, explained that at the time of the IM-1 launch he had made modifications to the tracking parameters. This led researchers to initially believe that the rocket had approached Earth (relative to the Moon) in February, and a simulation of 2024 JV8 created by Coffinet shows the rocket close to the Moon on February 21st a day or so before Intuitive Machine's IM-1 lunar lander soft landed on the Moon.
According to Gray's reply to Coffinet and his email sent to the minor planet center (MPC):
A bit after IM-1 was launched, we were getting astrometry for both the spacecraft and the booster. They were unusually close to one another in the sky (well under an arcminute for quite a while). Sat_ID was getting a little confused as a result and not sure as to whether a given tracklet was for 2024-030A (spacecraft) or 2024-030B (rocket). So I “cleverly” set things up so that tracklets matched those two objects only if they were within 0.0025 degrees = 9 arcseconds of the predicted locations, much tighter than the usual tolerances:
https://github.com/Bill-Gray/tles/blob/master/tle_list.txt#L119
I could do that because we had excellent (good to better than an arcsecond) trajectories for both objects.
However, the booster hasn’t been seen since March 19, and it had drifted about 28” off prediction by the time this tracklet was found. So it didn’t get identified.
The 9" search threshhold was really only needed on the way to the moon. I've broken things apart so that a more reasonable tolerance is used for observations after the lunar flyby (see the above URL). So I don't think the problem will recur.
In short, since the tracklet (a portion of a rocket's mapped track) was set to match the object only if there was a high degree of precision between the observed and predicted values, it did not correctly identify the booster. Subsequently, astronomers incorrectly classified it as an asteroid with an impact probability.
In his reply to Coffinet, the researcher added that he expected that the "object will remain visible from time to time until sometime around October," potentially implying that it might be a while before the rocket returns to Earth.
The rocket's incorrect classification as an asteroid also led NASA's Sentinel monitoring system to calculate the probability that it might hit Earth. This data shows that there is a one in twenty nine chance of collision based on observations made over the past two days.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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