Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2026

10 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2026 ASTRO PUBLISHING destination, it was lost shortly before reaching the planet. The events of NEAs 2020 SO, 2001 DO 47 , and 2005 VL 1 demonstrate that it is possi- ble to distinguish artifacts from natural bodies based on their orbital motion and spectroscopic properties, even if they are only a few meters in size; however, they must be nearby and relatively slow. But this may not be enough in the search for non-terrestrial technology. If an alien civilization wanted to “spy” on Earth, it would have other solutions avail- able, such as a probe placed on an NEA, or the equivalent of a CubeSat inserted into a Lagrangian point, or in a quasi- satellite orbit, or in other co-orbital trajectories capable of periodically L ow-altitude image of the Apollo 12 landing site, taken by LROC. The descent stage of the Lunar Module Intrepid, the Apollo Lunar Science Experi- ment Package (ALSEP), and the Surveyor III space- craft are visible, along with the tracks left by the astronauts. The image is 275 me- ters wide; north is at the top. [NASA/ GSFC/Arizona State University]. launched by the USA towards the Moon on 20 September 1966. A very similar case involved another near-Earth asteroid, dis- covered on February 1 st , twenty-five years ago, by the Spacewatch Telescope (Steward Observatory, Kitt Peak) and named 2001 DO 47 . Subsequent observations with the Goldstone Solar System Radar (Barstow, Califor- nia) revealed anomalies in its trajectory, which, in- stead of being uniform, exhibited atypical dis- placements for an aster- oid. These anomalies la- ter turned out to coincide with a series of engine firings on NASA’s Wind probe. An equally illustrative ex- ample is the case of NEA 2005 VL 1 , initially classi- fied as an asteroid, later as a dark comet due to unusual non-gravitation- al acceleration, and re- cently identified with a high probability as the Soviet space probe Venera 2. Launched on No- vember 12, 1965, with Venus as its O verview of the Apollo 17 landing site, imaged by LROC. In addition to the Lunar Module Challenger (maximum width 9.4 meters), the ALSEP equipment is visible on the left and the final resting place of the lunar rover (LRV) on the far right. In the inset, the Challenger is shown magnified three times. [NASA/GSFC/ASU/Jason Davis]