Could asteroid 2016 HO3 be a Saturn V S-IVB third stage like J002E3?

[LaurieAG]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2016-154

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/16/us/nasa-asteroid-circles-earth/

A small asteroid has been found circling Earth as the two objects orbit the sun together. Scientists say it looks like the asteroid -- called 2016 HO3 -- has been out there for about 50 years and isn't going away anytime soon.

 

50 years ago gives 1966 so it could be another Saturn V S-IVB third stage like J002E3 from Apollo 12? It would be easy to test.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J002E3

J002E3 is the designation given to an object in space discovered on September 3, 2002 by amateur astronomer Bill Yeung. Initially thought to be an asteroid, it has since been tentatively identified as the S-IVB third stage of the Apollo 12 Saturn V rocket (designated S-IVB-507), based on spectrographic evidence consistent with the paint used on the rockets.[1][2] The stage was intended to be injected into a permanent heliocentric orbit in November 1969, but is now believed instead to have gone into an unstable high Earth orbit which left Earth's proximity in 1971 and again in June 2003, with an approximately 40-year cycle between heliocentric and geocentric orbit.

Maybe the modified stage 3 of AS-203, launched on July 5, 1966 wasn't inadvertently destroyed along with stage 2 after all. The modified stage 3 used would have to be very close to the weight of a normal stage 3 for the results to be useful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS-203

AS-203 (or SA-203) was an unmanned flight of the Saturn IB rocket on July 5, 1966. It carried no Apollo Command/Service Module spacecraft, as its purpose was to verify the design of the S-IVB rocket stage restart capability that would later be used in the Apollo program to boost astronauts from Earth orbit to a trajectory towards the Moon. It successfully achieved its objectives, but the stage was inadvertently destroyed after four orbits.

It could also be the third stage from Apollo 8, 9, 10 or 11 which are all recorded to have reached heliocentric orbit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-IVB#Stages_built

[Raider5678]

That would be.... Interesting.