Quote:In 2002 a small asteroid known as J002E3 was discovered on a near earth orbit. It was first spotted by an amateur astronomer, Bill Yeung and was reported as a passing Near-Earth Object. Soon, however, the object’s motion suggested it wasn’t just passing by, it was in an orbit around the Earth. Its trajectory had all the telltale signs of being a space debris and further observations have also confirmed that the object’s spectral signature matched the white titanium dioxide paint used on Apollo rockets. J002E3 is most likely to be the third stage of the rocket that launched Apollo 12, which failed to crash on the Moon as planned. NASA used such impacts to generate ‘Moonquakes’ that could be studied by lunar seismographs to gain information on the Moon’s interior.
J002E3’s orbit is a bit unusual but not unique; the object spends some time in the Sun-Earth first Lagrange point (L1), then loops around Earth, reaches escape velocity in the process and flies back into heliocentric orbit where it currently resides. Although its orbit is constantly changing because of gravitational perturbations by the Sun and Moon, J002E3 is expected to come back around the mid 2040s.