In near-earth space, an object unknown to science or secretly launched into orbit with a strange orbit somehow related to the Moon was accidentally discovered
On October 26, 2009, four observatories in the United States at once, in the states of Arizona and New Mexico, carried out observations of an accidentally discovered object, which received the code name 9U01FF6.
Subsequently, the existence of the object was confirmed by Spanish observers.
Its nature is still unknown, but the object is distinguished by a very strange near-earth orbit with an orbital period of 1 month (31 days), high eccentricity and apogee of 420 thousand km.
Such orbits are close to transfer to lunar orbits, but do not correspond to those declared for the Apollo program and are much closer, according to experts, to the orbits of the vehicles launched using the Agens LV in the 1960s - the era of NASA's Apollo program.
The perigee of the 9U01FF6 orbit is currently about 50 thousand km, which allowed the object to remain unnoticed by observers and monitoring stations for near-Earth space for a long time.
What is the nature of the object is not yet clear. Topocentric ephemeris of the object are given on the site of the Pluto project.
A similar case already happened in 2002. Then an unusual object orbiting our planet in a very elongated orbit was discovered by amateur astronomer Bill Young. After several months of observations and calculations of its trajectory, experts came to the conclusion that it was the stage of Apollo 12, dropped in 1969.