The Mysterious 30 Year Journey of Apollo 12

It’s amazing how these calculations are made. Amazing work by these scientists.

Haha, how wholesome. It comes back home to pay a visit every 30 or so years and then goes away again for another 30 years.

great human earth not just polluting the earth moon but the suns orbit with junk scrap metal then

A peice of fuggin metal travelled more then me..

Now I wish games had cool orbital mechanic systems that would allow such fun lagrange tomfoolery to occur. Sadly most games just use good old "spheres of influence"

Should get elon to use his new fancy starship to grab it

Only issue I have is the opening, earth captures plenty of asteroids naturally and they can even orbit for a few thousand years before tidal forces eject them from their orbits

how empathic are you?
i feel sad for the engine flying alone in space.

Somebody got fired 32 years later😂😂😂

Sureeeeee bro. Fakest bs ever

Earth is flat. Earth does not rotate. Earth is covered with a solid dome. We live in God's terrarium. An orbit is not possible.

It had to exist somewhere, after the government faction lost sight of it the first time. An important space junk course.

*taking notes for my future KSP missions LUL

Idk it’s cool?

Return to sender.

that first orbit the 3rd stage had is literally all of my simplerockets 2 orbits, im not lying

What an interesting story!

hearing 2040 referred to as "the 40s" makes me feel old as FUCK and im NOT that old.

This is a lie! Why do you not call this Stage "Omuamuamuamiaumiau"??? What will come next? Better you will be blast off from Saturn V-III with their cluster Nukes! Your CIA and your Government is a big lie!

Why did they take light measurements of it when they could have just used a damn telescope to look at it????

Wow. Really cool 😎

Cool, I will own the last image ever taken of this object for another 20 years. :-)

All I’m hearing is there has been a huge rocket flying around earth and the sun and we only found out cause we noticed an object orbiting us. From astronomy. I get it’s small and all but how did we not see this sooner?!

It is possible that, after '40, the next return will be at a time when we can go grab it and stick it in a museum!

61 km is 2,100,000 feet give or take.
Hey, we're talking about an American mission here. This should be in feet in miles kilometers.

It was Apollo 13 that this happened, not 12.

Too bad we didn’t put sensors and a solar array on it.

What kind of condition is it in?

Assuming it doesn't get lobbed into the sun or ejected from the solar system somehow, we'll eventually be advanced enough to recover it and put it in a museum. Kinda neat.

it is funny that appolo 12 third stage was like no ima do my own thing

🌻❤🌷❤🌻

Apollo program

Wikipedia • The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which succeeded in preparing and landing the first men on the Moon from 1968 to 1972.

Sounds like something out of KSP

"As far as they knew, the only natural object that orbited the Earth was the Moon."
Except there's quite a few asteroids that orbit Earth with multi-month and multi-year periods, so...

That’s so interesting. It will be cool to have an opportunity in the future to see it.

This gave Elon Musk idea to start returning rockets😂.
Ecxept this one returned by herself hahahahahahah

science: 3 body problem is impossible to solve
science: we calculated the trajectory backwards and found it left earth, and we calculated it forward and found it will come back in the 40s

ok then

i subscribed to be part of 1m

A bundle of 1960s technology will still exist, when humans and their other creations have vanished from earth.

Of course we are just throwing our trash into space, just like we did to the ocean. We SUCK.

DO NOT LIKE.
40kmh = 25mph.
Have you ever gone 80 in a 55? Of course you have. Have you ever been stuck in traffic at 30 in a 55? All the time.
These are industrial age human scales of error on an astrophysics board!
While I can’t do the math here, one can see that the concept is clear. Had this been 25mph faster (as opposed to slower) than the objective then instead of being inside the earth’s orbit, this could have been flung out to the Neptunian zone or worse into space altogether.
With the variance of a regular speed on a NJ highway determining success or failure, life or death, do you really want to get on that ship to Mars?
THIS IS OUR ONLY PLANET. FIX CLIMATE CHANGE NOW.

Goes out on fantastic journeys but never forgets its home.

Be cool to capture it in the 40s for display at a lunar museum.

the stage is homesick guys, it comes back for a visit every 30 years