A mysterious object speeding through the is accelerating in a way gravity alone cannot explain, fueling a theory that it could be a Soviet spacecraft lost nearly four decades ago.
Known as 1998 KY26, the roughly 36-foot-wide object is believed to be a near-Earth asteroid, but something other than gravity appears to be affecting its path. New research has now cast doubt on one explanation for what is pushing it through space.
Jared Isaacman weighed in on the growing speculation Thursday morning on “Fox & Friends,” saying some in the UAP community believe the object is making unusual movements, but he has seen no evidence KY26 is anything other than an asteroid.
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“First of all, nothing is about to hit us, to be very clear on this,” Isaacman said. “I’ve not seen any evidence to suggest this is a threat to our planet or anything other than an asteroid.”
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Scientists refer to KY26’s unusual movement as “nongravitational acceleration,” meaning something besides the pull of the sun and planets is affecting its path.
One theory has been that KY26 is a “dark comet” containing buried water that turns to gas and gives the object a push through space, even though astronomers have not detected the cloud or tail normally associated with a comet.
But a new peer-reviewed study by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers Korbin Hansen and Masatoshi Hirabayashi casts doubt on that explanation.
Their study, published in the journal Icarus, found KY26 is likely too warm for buried water ice to survive long enough to account for the unusual movement.
The researchers concluded that calculated water-loss rates “preclude 1998 KY26 being a dark comet at present.”
There are other possible explanations. Previous research found that sunlight hitting KY26 and heat escaping from its surface could produce the extra push without buried water.
Another group of researchers, however, has explored a far more unusual possibility.
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb and researchers Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl have examined whether KY26 could actually be Phobos 1, an unmanned Soviet spacecraft that stopped communicating while traveling to Mars in 1988.
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KY26 is about 36 feet across, reflects roughly 52% of the sunlight that hits it and completes a full rotation every 5.35 minutes.
