WT1190F is expected to crash 40 miles away from Sri Lanka.
By Sreekanth A Nair
An Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) named WT1190F is expected to crash into the Indian Ocean on November 13.
Scientists believe that the object is a space junk and will crash into the Indian Ocean around 40 miles away from the southern part of Sri Lanka at 6.15 a.m. on November 13.
The UFO was discovered in 2013 by Catalina Sky Survey (CSS), a project that carries out searches on Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and warns when such objects approach earth. CSS observed it several times and early in this month it rediscovered the UFO.
WT1190F is approximately 2 meters long and it is likely to be a piece of rocket. It also seems to be hollow and bent.
The European Space Agency (ESA) reported that “the expected 13 November re-entry of what is likely to be a rocket body poses very little risk to anyone but could help scientists improve our understanding of how any object-man-made or natural- interacts with Earth’s atmosphere.â€
ESA’s NEO Coordination Centre (NEOCC) has confirmed that the UFO is orbiting earth every three weeks in a non-circular – orbit. Scientists say that the disorderly gravity of sun and moon might have put the WT1190F in such an orbit. Though there is many such space junk in orbit around earth and moon, at present researchers observe only 20 of them.
Tim Flohrer, from ESA’s Space Debris Office said “The object is quite small; at most a couple of meters in diameter, and a significant fraction if not all of it can be expected to completely burn up in the atmosphere.â€
The NEOCC is going to conduct observational campaigns to collect as much data as possible on this object.
Marco Michel at the NEOCC said that “the first goal will be to better understand the re-entry of satellites and debris from highly eccentric orbits. Second, it provides an ideal opportunity to test our readiness for any possible future atmospheric entry events involving an asteroid, since the components of this scenario, from discovery to impact, are all very similar.â€