Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-119.236.136.97-20130920081646/@comment-1824272-20130920180548

That is why I did not call it a moon in the article.

1986 VG1 is an asteroid designation (similar to 1994 XF04) which means that the asteroid that this classification refers to was discovered in 1986. The Ulysses Disaster happened in 1999.

In our real life, 1986 VG1 is an actual designation for an actual asteroid, named 5254 Ulysses. However, it is a Jupiter Trojan (Jupiter Trojans are asteroids in the asteroid belt that surrounds Jupiter, but is inside the orbit of its moons). If you look at the trailer more carefully, Polyphemus is in between Jupiter and its moons, and there is something labeled 1986 VG1 approaching the center of the screen from the right.

All of this brought me to only one conclusion. Instead of a Jupiter Trojan, Infinity made the Ulysses an asteroid on its own that orbits the Sun at an elliptical orbit. It was discovered in 1986, just like in real life. In 1999, Ulysses' orbit crosses into what looks like the Jupiter Trojan asteroid belt and strikes Polyphemus, which is apparently the name of one of the asteroids in the belt. The resulting collision between the two asteroids creates 10,000 smaller meteors (I say "smaller" but the fragments must still be really large because of how asteroids are), and the collision sends these fragments flying towards Earth.

In Strangereal, the Ulysses was one asteroid that approached the planet and then split into multiple pieces after hitting our atmosphere. In Infinity, the Ulysses was one asteroid that hits a Jupiter Trojan named Polyphemus, splitting it into multiple pieces (10,000) that then approached Earth and hit.

Of course, I may be wrong and it'll turn out to be Polyphemus is actually a fictional moon. But I think this makes the most sense. :)