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”. ||||| The fireball that streaked across the skies of south-eastern Australia on Thursday night was an ejected piece of a Russian rocket used to launch a weather satellite, a leading astronomer says. 
 
 NASA issued an alert on Thursday saying a seven-metre, three-tonne, cylindrical object would plunge to Earth over Victoria and Tasmania, said Professor Brian Schmidt, an astronomer at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University. 
 
 “Orbits of these [pieces of space junk] is monitored quite closely," he said. "This one was decaying rapidly and the prediction of the path was confirmed, because everyone saw it." 
 
 The object was the "third-stage" of the Soyuz rocket used on July 8 to launch Russia’s second Meteor-M weather satellite, quashing beliefs it was a meteorite. 
 
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 One resident Cobar, in western NSW, reported hearing a sonic boom after a five minute delay, which indicated the object disintegrated within 100 kilometres of the town, said Professor Schmidt. 
 
 But Dr Nick Lomb, curator of astronomy at Sydney Observatory, said the "main part" of the bright object most likely plunged into the ocean near Brisbane. 
 
 Dr Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said data from the Space-Track organisation showed the rocket part re-entered over a track from southern NSW to southern Queensland. 
 
 "Break-up is over NSW [near] Canberra but subset of densest debris, if any survives, might have made it to south Queensland," he said. 
 
 Dr McDowell had tweeted that the object was: "Object 40077, 3rd stage from Meteor-M launch, reentered over Australia at about 1145 UTC Jul 10". 
 
 The fireball has been described as a "massive shooting star" by witnesses in Melbourne and Sydney. It was also spotted by residents in Tasmania and South Australia. 
 
 Callers to talkback radio stations reported seeing a bright object travelling east to north about 9.45pm. Some callers said they initially thought it was a burning plane. 
 
 Radio station 3AW listener John said he pulled over while driving to watch the light show. 
 
 “It was really impressive,” he said. “It had the flame and the intense burn. Just as it was falling away it broke up. I’d say it was a little asteroid or a comet.” 
 
 Here is the Russ. rocket stage before launch -this is the actual one that burnt up over NSW @EstherHjHan @cosmicpinot pic.twitter.com/Ciqaq4YW41 — Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) July 10, 2014 
 
 The fireball was a “very rare and exciting” event, said Dr Lomb. 
 
 He believed the object was space junk because it was travelling slower than the escape velocity from Earth, which is 11.2km/sec or 40,000km/hour. 
 
 “Some people saw it for a 10 seconds or more, which is a very long time for a piece of rock from space, which suggests it could have been space junk,” he said. 
 
 Dr Alan Duffy, a research fellow at Swinburne University of Technology, said Australians were lucky to receive the visual feast. 
 
 
 
 “If the debris had entered our atmosphere a few minutes earlier, it would have burnt up before reaching the mainland and it was a few minutes later, it would have passed Australia and given south-east Asia the spectacular lightshow,” he said. 
 
 Dr Duffy expects dozens of people will scour the surrounding areas of Cobar for bits of debris. Any remnants would likely be the size of dinner plates. 
 
 
 
 “Depending on how tough the space junk is, there will be pieces on the desert floor. I reckon this is going to be a tough find though,” he said. “There are even apps for this, like one called Fireball, which can help you track it down to hundreds of metres.” 
 
 The president of the Astronomical Society of Victoria, Ken Le Marquand, said a Melbourne witness reported seeing a meteor going from “horizon to horizon” at 10pm. 
 
 “He said it didn't get quite as bright as the moon and was mostly white with a bit of red at the end," he said. 
 
 "He said it went for 30 seconds, which is an awful long time. Usually the ones we see in the sky are the size of dust and only last a second. But if you get something a bit bigger, like the size of a pea, it can put on a spectacular light show.”
– 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."