新小行星or旧火箭残片
A mini-moon is on track to enter Earth's orbit and come as close as 27,000 miles away.
一颗迷你月亮正按计划进入地球轨道，并将在2.7万英里以外的地方靠近地球。
However, rather than some asteroid that will orbit around the Earth, it may actually just be some old space junk that made its way back to our planet.
然而，它可能只是一些旧的太空垃圾，而不是一些将绕地球轨道运行的小行星。
Dr. Paul Chodas, the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, believes that the object, named Asteroid 2020 SO, is an old booster rocket from the 1960s.
美国宇航局近地天体研究中心主任保罗·乔达斯博士认为，这颗名为“小行星2020 SO”的天体是上世纪60年代的一枚老式助推火箭残片。
"I suspect this newly discovered object 2020 SO to be an old rocket booster because it is following an orbit about the Sun that is extremely similar to Earth's, nearly circular, in the same plane, and only slightly farther away the Sun at its farthest point," Chodas told us.
卓达斯告诉我们:“我怀疑这个新发现的物体可能是一个老式的火箭助推器，因为它绕太阳运行的轨道与地球极为相似，在同一平面上接近圆形，只是离太阳最远的点稍微远一点。”
"That's precisely the kind of orbit that a rocket stage separated from a lunar mission would follow, once it passes by the Moon and escapes into orbit about the Sun. It's unlikely that an asteroid could have evolved into an orbit like this, but not impossible."
“这正是火箭从探月任务中分离出来的轨道，一旦它经过月球并逃逸到围绕太阳的轨道上。一颗小行星不太可能进化成这样的轨道，但也不是完全不可能。”
Chodas analyzed the motion of the asteroid backwards in time to try and link it with any known lunar mission launch and found that it was likely in the "vicinity of the Earth back in late 1966."
乔达斯分析了这颗小行星的运动，试图将其与任何已知的探月任务联系起来，并发现它可能在“1966年末就在地球附近”。
He said that correlates with the launch of Surveyor 2 on September 20, 1966.
他说，这与1966年9月20日“探测者2号”的发射有关。
That mission was designed to have a soft landing on the Moon, but a failure led to the spacecraft crashing, Chodas said.
卓达斯说，那次任务的目的是在月球上软着陆，但一次失误导致了飞船坠毁。
The Centaur rocket that was used to boost the spacecraft passed by the Moon and went into orbit near the Sun and has not been seen again, until now, Chodas suspects.
乔达斯怀疑，用于推进航天器的半人马火箭经过月球后进入了靠近太阳的轨道，直到现在才再次被人发现。
The object is likely to enter into a distant orbit around Earth in late November, and if it's an asteroid it would be considered a mini-moon.
该物体可能在11月下旬进入一个遥远的围绕地球的轨道，如果它是一颗小行星，它将被认为是一个迷你月亮。
However, if it is a booster rocket as Chodas suspects, it will just be another piece of space debris floating around space.
然而，如果它像卓达斯猜测的那样是助推火箭，那么它将只是漂浮在太空中的另一块太空碎片。
"In a month or so we will get an indication of whether or not 2020 SO really is a rocket body, since we should start being able to detect the effect of sunlight pressure has on the motion of this object: if it really is a rocket body, it will be much less dense than an asteroid and the slight pressure due to sunlight will produce enough change in its motion that we should be able to detect it in the tracking data," Chodas said.
“再过一个月左右，我们就会知道2020年是否真的是一个火箭残体，因为我们应该开始能够探测到阳光压力对这个物体运动的影响：如果它真的是一个火箭体，那么它的密度将比小行星小得多，而阳光带来的轻微压力将在它的运动中产生足够的变化，我们应该能够在跟踪数据中检测到它。”卓达斯说道。
It is rare for long-lost rocket stages to be captured from orbit about the Sun and into orbit about the Earth, and this would only be the second instance of a rocket stage getting captured from orbit.
丢失已久的火箭残片从绕太阳的轨道上被捕获并进入绕地球的轨道是很罕见的，这是第二次在轨道上捕获火箭残片。
The only other time it happened was in 2002 from what may have been the Saturn V upper stage from Apollo 12, Chodas said.
卓达斯说，之前唯一一次发生这种情况是在2002年，当时可能是阿波罗12号发射的土星5号上段。
问题
文中提到的火箭残片是哪一年发射的？
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