The peace and tranquility on the Moon is set to be disturbed as a three-ton rocket plummets, into the surface, carving out a crater that could fit several semitractor-trailers. A rocket will hit the lunar surface on March 4 however telescopes and prying eyes will not be able to track the mega-collision.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer with the Center for Astrophysics, has confirmed that an object will crash on the Moon, which could be the second stage of a rocket. The haphazardly tumbling object was first identified by Bill Gray, who writes the widely used Project Pluto software to track near-Earth objects.
Gray had put out calls for astronomers to observe the stage which appears to be tumbling through space. He had calculated how much sunlight is pushing outward on the object, gently pushing it away from the sun. He maintained that once the upper stage strikes the lunar surface, Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Isro’s Chandrayaan-2 orbiter could find the crater that will be formed by the crash.
CRASHING ON THE MOON
The leftover rocket will smash into the far side of the moon on Friday at a staggering speed of 9,300 kilometers per hour. Telescopes will not be able to pick up the collision since the strike will happen on the far side of the Moon that remains away from the sunlight permanently. This will make it difficult to locate the newly formed crater.
Scientists expect the object to carve out a hole 10 to 20 meters across.
Scientists expect the object to carve out a hole 10 to 20 meters across and send moon dust flying hundreds of kilometers across the barren, pockmarked surface. The moon already bears countless craters, ranging up to 1,600 miles (2,500 kilometers). With little to no real atmosphere, the moon is defenseless against the constant barrage of meteors and asteroids, and the occasional incoming spacecraft, including a few, intentionally crashed for science’s sake. With no weather, there’s no erosion and so impact craters last forever.
US CONFIRMS ROCKET IS CHINESE
While initially it was reported that the crashing rocket could be a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket, astronomers reported the misidentification. The rocket was then identified as the second stage of China’s Chang’e-5 mission.
“I (mis)identified this object as 2015-007B, the second stage of the DSCOVR spacecraft. We now have good evidence that it is actually 2014-065B, the booster for the Chang’e 5-T1 lunar mission. It will, however, still hit the moon within a few kilometers of the predicted spot,” Gray said in a blog update.
While China denied saying the booster in question had “safely entered the Earth’s atmosphere and was completely incinerated”, the US Space Command, which tracks lower space junk, confirmed Tuesday that the Chinese upper stage from the 2014 lunar mission never deorbited. Gray said he’s confident now that it’s China’s rocket.
China has a lunar lander on the moon’s far side, but it will be too far away to detect Friday’s impact just north of the equator. Gray said SpaceX never contacted him to challenge his original claim. Neither have the Chinese.