It is certainly interesting that this "new moon" is probably the Apollo 12 S-IVb stage. However I find it disappointing that this relic may end up impacting the Moon. I'd much rather see it remain in heliocentric orbit for the next 100,000 years.

I'll preface my next comment by saying that I'm a SETI skeptic. IMHO for a SETI scheme to be valid, it must in theory be able to detect intelligent life in our Solar System if it were transplanted to the Tau Ceti system (it is my understaning that no SETI scheme to date can satisfy this obvious test). However despite my skepticisim about SETI, I have to confess that when I first read about the Apollo 12 S-IVB stage, I was hoping it was an ancient "space alien" artifact. It would be so cool to actually find a old piece of hardware left behind by a starship. I believe that interstellar travel is possible but extremely difficult, e.g. an enormous nuclear fusion powered vehicle travelling at one percent the speed of light. Such a vehicle would use a machine intelligence that was self aware (a HAL-9000) that could handle self repair for the several centuries required to traverse interstellar space. Our Solar System is probably visited by such vehicles once every few million years. The decelleration stages would be huge being about the size of a small asteroid. These stages would probably be made out of unfinished high strength steel and be easily mistaken for an iron-nickel asteroid. I suspect these stages would be dumped in heliocentric orbits not far from the Earth. There is an asteroid named Kleopatra that looked like a possible candidate but unfortunately it is too big. Anyway it's nice to dream.

Gary