Oldest Human-made object in space

[bluedigger]

The recent launch of the Curiosity Mars rover has quietly broken the record for oldest human-made object in space, and instantly pulled numismatics, the study of coinage, into the Space Age.

Prior to the launch, the oldest human-made object in space was the Vanguard 1 satellite, which was launched in 1958 and operated until 1964. Now it is a coin!

American geologists have long used copper Lincoln pennies as scale indicators in photographs. All the Mars rover missions are geology projects conducted at a distance. And so, as a homage to professional geology tradition, a 1909 one-cent coin is attached to Curiosity's camera calibration target.

Being over a hundred years old, the coin is from a time sufficiently far from the present that industrial and conflict archaeologists already routinely excavate and document its remains. As far as I know, this is the first time that an antique is launched into space (disregarding stuff astronauts have brought into orbit and then back home again).http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2012/02/oldest_human-made_object_in_sp.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2FlgtN+%28Aardvarchaeology%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

With traditional counter argument and refutation at the link.

[Orsino]

1. 100 years from now...

...Coast To Coast listeners will be telling each other about Teddy Roosevelt's secret space program.