Looking skyward from El Centro, Calif., amateur astronomer Bill Yeung discovered a new object in the sky. Earlier this month, it was being hailed as possibly "another moon of the Earth, just arrived."

Yeung had reported an "odd object" in orbit around Earth, hoping officials might at least discover it to be an asteroid. The object was named "J002E3" as scientists got to work.

But the "new moon" turned out to be space junk -- an Apollo-era rocket that had escaped Earth's orbit in the late 1960s.

The identification was made as the object orbited between 155,000 and 466,000 miles from Earth.

NASA scientists analyzed the light radiated by the object, which turned up chemical fingerprints of white titanium oxide paint. That's the paint that was used on the Apollo Saturn S-IVB third stage.

The rocket most likely came from Apollo 12's Saturn V, launched in 1969, and it escaped Earth's orbit in 1971.

Canadian Paul Chodas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Near-Earth Object Program office, led the project to identify JOO2E3.

"It's a great detective story because it's a mystery object -- and you want to know how it got there and where it came from."

The rocket, according to Chodas' analysis, will take another four laps around the Earth. "And then it's going to make a very close approach to the moon next year in May, then it will be flung back out in orbit around the sun."