On Wednesday (Jan. 13), an object called 2010 AL30 will fly by Earth at a distance of 130,000 km (80,000 miles). That's only one-third of the way from here to the moon. This small object is cataloged as a 10 meter-wide asteroid and there's no chance it will impact Earth, but it does provide astronomers with an interesting opportunity. What makes this near-Earth object (NEO) special is that it has an orbital period of almost exactly one year. This fact has led some scientists to speculate that 2010 AL30 could be a man made object and not an asteroid. After all, there's a lot of space junk up there, there's every possibility that it could be a spent rocket booster or some other spacecraft artifact. But it could just be coincidence that the NEO has the same orbital period as Earth and that it's just another asteroid.