An astronomer from Crimea discovered the upper stage of the American lunar module

Russian scientists working in Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics (IPM) RAS, reported their discovery – the Centaur upper stage, which disappeared from the field of view of astronomers after the American lunar landing module Peregrine was launched into orbit, was found during observations carried out by CrAO RAS researcher Vasily Rumyantsev on the night of January 9-10. The object was discovered using the AT-64 telescope and turned out to be bright and rotating. This is not expected to impact the performance of Celestis customers aboard the booster.

The Centaur upper stage disappeared on January 8 from the Cape Canaveral Space Center in Florida after the launch of the United Launch Alliance Vulcan launch vehicle with the Peregrine lander. After separation, the upper stage turned out to be faulty and could not take a stable position oriented towards the Sun. Astronomers were unable to detect the upper stage, but it later turned out that the Minor Planet Center identified this upper stage with the object gb00671, discovered by Crimean astronomer Gennady Borisov during a systematic search for near-Earth asteroids.

In addition, on the website of the M.V. Institute of Applied Mathematics Keldysh RAS reports the detection of anomalous aurora in Crimea for the second time in a year.