==Discovery==
When it was first discovered, it was quickly found that the object was in an [[orbit]] around [[Earth]]. Astronomers were surprised at this, as the [[Moon]] is the only large object in orbit around the Earth,<ref group=lower-alpha>Also orbiting the Earth are the [[Kordylewski cloud]]s: large transient concentrations of dust at the [[Trojan points]] of the Earth–Moon system, discovered in 1956 by the [[Poland|Polish]] astronomer [[Kazimierz Kordylewski]].</ref> and anything else would have been ejected long ago due to [[perturbation (astronomy)|perturbation]]s with the Earth, the Moon and the [[Sun]].
Therefore, it probably entered into [[Geocentric orbit|Earth orbit]] very recently, yet there was no recently launched spacecraft that matched the orbit of J002E3. One explanation could have been that it was a 30 meter-wide piece of rock, but [[University of Arizona]] astronomers found that spectral observations of the object indicated a strong correlation of absorption features with a combination of human-made materials including white paint, black paint, and aluminum, consistent with [[Saturn V]] rockets.<ref name=Jorgensen/> Back-tracing its orbit showed that the object had been orbiting the Sun for 31 years and had last been in the vicinity of the Earth in 1971. This seemed to suggest that it was a part of the [[Apollo 14]] mission, but NASA knew the whereabouts of all hardware used for that mission; the third stage, for instance, was deliberately crashed into the Moon for seismic studies.
==Discovery==
When it was first discovered, it was quickly found that the object was in an [[orbit]] around [[Earth]]. Astronomers were surprised at this, as the [[Moon]] is the only large object in orbit around the Earth,<ref group=lower-alpha>Also orbiting the Earth are the [[Kordylewski cloud]]s: large transient concentrations of dust at the [[Trojan points]] of the Earth–Moon system, discovered in 1956 by the [[Poland|Polish]] astronomer [[Kazimierz Kordylewski]].</ref> and anything else would have been ejected long ago due to [[perturbation (astronomy)|perturbation]]s with the Earth, the Moon and the [[Sun]].
Therefore, it probably entered into [[Geocentric orbit|Earth orbit]] very recently, yet there was no recently launched spacecraft that matched the orbit of J002E3. One explanation could have been that it was a 30 meter-wide piece of rock, but [[University of Arizona]] astronomers found that spectral observations of the object indicated a strong correlation of absorption features with a combination of human-made materials including white paint, black paint, and aluminum, consistent with [[Saturn V]] rockets.<ref name=Jorgensen/> Back-tracing its orbit showed that the object had been orbiting the Sun for 31 years and had last been in the vicinity of the Earth in 1971. This seemed to suggest that it was a part of the [[Apollo 14]] mission, but NASA knew the whereabouts of all hardware used for that mission; the third stage, for instance, was deliberately crashed into the Moon for seismic studies.