text: SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s a piece of space junk — WT1190F — and it’s colliding with Earth on Friday, the 13th! 
   
   That’s what scientists are calling a mystery piece of orbital debris heading our way. And impact really is Friday, November 13. 
   
   WT1190F was orbiting beyond the moon, and according to a report in the science journal Nature, was “glimpsed by a telescope in early October.” 
   
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   Scientists say it is three to six feet long and man-made. As for exactly where it came from, there is speculation it could be some 50-year old spent rocket, or perhaps a piece of “paneling shed by a recent moon mission.” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard called it “a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us.” 
   
   Bill Gray at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena has been tracking WT1190F. He calculates it will land somewhere in the Indian Ocean off the southern tip of Sri Lanka, but will likely burn up before reaching earth. 
   
   Still, Gray cautions, “I would not necessarily want to be going fishing directly underneath it.” 
   
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   According to NASA there are more than half a million pieces of debris orbiting Earth at speeds up to 17,500 mph. Given WT1190F is landing on unlucky Friday the 13th, suspicious earthlings in the target landing zone should probably duck for this one. 
   
   CBSSF.com writer, producer Jan Mabry is also executive producer and host of The Bronze Report. She lives in Northern California. Follow her on Twitter @janmabr. ||||| Researchers call it sheer coincidence that a newly discovered piece of space junk is officially designated WT1190F. But the letters in the name, which form the acronym for an unprintable expression of bafflement, are an appropriate fit for an object that is as mysterious as it is unprecedented. 
   
   B. Bolin, R. Jedicke, M. Micheli 
   
   Scientists have worked out that WT1190F will plunge to Earth from above the Indian Ocean on 13 November, making it one of the very few space objects whose impact can be accurately predicted. More unusual still, WT1190F was a 'lost' piece of space debris orbiting far beyond the Moon, ignored and unidentified, before being glimpsed by a telescope in early October. 
   
   An observing campaign is now taking shape to follow the object as it dives through Earth’s atmosphere, says Gerhard Drolshagen, co-manager in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, of the European Space Agency’s near-Earth objects office. The event not only offers a scientific opportunity to watch something plunge through the atmosphere, but also tests the plans that astronomers have put in place to coordinate their efforts when a potentially dangerous space object shows up. “What we planned to do seems to work,” Drolshagen says. “But it’s still three weeks to go.” 
   
   WT1190F was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey, a programme based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, aimed at discovering asteroids and comets that swing close to Earth. At first, scientists didn’t know what to make of this weird body. But they quickly computed its trajectory after collecting further observations and unearthing 2012 and 2013 sightings from telescope archives, says independent astronomy-software developer Bill Gray, who has been tracking the debris with astronomers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. 
   
   WT1190F travels a highly elliptical orbit, swinging out twice as far as the Earth–Moon distance, Gray says. Gray’s calculations show that it will hit Earth at 6:20 utc, hitting the ocean about 65 kilometres off the southern tip of Sri Lanka. Much, if not all, of it will burn up in the atmosphere, but “I would not necessarily want to be going fishing directly underneath it”, Gray says. 
   
   The object is only 1 to 2 metres in size, and its trajectory shows that it has a low density, and is perhaps hollow. That suggests an artificial object, “a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us”, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It could be a spent rocket stage or panelling shed by a recent Moon mission. It is also possible that the debris dates back decades, perhaps even to the Apollo era. An object seen orbiting Earth in 2002 was eventually identified as a discarded segment of the Saturn V rocket that launched the second mission to land men on the Moon. 
   
   WT1190F is a rare breed of space object. Researchers are currently tracking only 20 or so artificial objects in distant orbits, says Gareth Williams, an astronomer at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are probably many more such pieces of space junk in orbit around the Earth–Moon system, but it is impossible to say how many. No others are known to have made the return trip to Earth, although it is likely that some have done so without anyone noticing, McDowell says. 
   
   Drolshagen plans to get spectral information on the object, which may help to identify it, and he hopes to coordinate impact observations conducted onboard ships or aeroplanes. But that may be the end of the concerted effort to study this class of object. Unlike near-Earth asteroids, space debris that flies well away from Earth has not commanded significant amounts of funding or attention. And the US military, which tracks space debris, says that it lacks the ability to identify WT1190F or to predict its path. 
   
   “There is no official, funded effort to do tracking of deep-Earth orbits the way we track low-Earth orbit,” McDowell says. “I think that has to change”.
target: – An unknown object is falling from the sky—WTF?? Actually, astronomers refer to it as WT1190F and say it's destined to strike Earth on Friday the 13th next month, CBS San Francisco reports. Bill Gray, an expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., says the unknown piece of space junk will land in the Indian Ocean not far from Sri Lanka. The object appears to be three to six feet long and has likely been orbiting way beyond the moon for a while now, Nature reports. It may be paneling or a used rocket stage from a recent trip to the moon, or could date back as far as the Apollo flights. Gray predicts it will burn up before landing, but adds that "I would not necessarily want to be going fishing directly underneath it."