A Dead Rocket Just Crashed Into the Moon, and Scientists Are Thrilled

A big hunk of space junk met an explosive end on Friday when it collided with the moon, and astronomers are indignant to view the fallout.

An old rocket booster once opinion to be the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9, but now believed to be from the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 mission (although China denies this), slammed into the moon’s far side at over 5,000 a long way per hour around 4:25 a.m. PT. 

The impact took save on the far side of the moon out of view of any telescopes or spacecraft, but NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will be in a residence to start taking photos of the impact site in mid-March. 

Modeling software matter AGI developed this animation of how the crash may have appeared from a indicate above the moon. 

Bill Gray, an amateur astronomer and software buyer in Maine, first noticed the terminal trajectory. His software picked up the influences in an orbital model and Gray worked with observatories approximately the world to gather additional data and increase his permission in the prediction. 

Gray believes he misidentified the booster as a Falcon 9 existences ago. He and other researchers since confirmed it to be the Chinese rocket part instead. 

“I am astounded that we can tell the difference between the two rocket body options — SpaceX versus Chinese — and reinforce which one will impact the moon with the data we have,” Adam Battle, a planetary science graduate student at the University of Arizona said in a statement in February. “The differences we see are primarily due to type of paint used by SpaceX and the Chinese.”

The rocket collapsed into the lunar surface in a crater named Hertzsprung that’s a minor larger than the state of Iowa. The location is remote enough that the influences doesn’t pose any threat to the Apollo mission or latest space program landing sites.

“(The) rocket impact will yielded a fortuitous experiment that could reveal a lot approximately how natural collisions pummel and scour planetary surfaces,” University of Colorado Boulder planetary scientist Paul Hayne wrote for The Conversation. “A deeper understanding of impact physics will go a long way in fractions researchers interpret the barren landscape of the Moon and also the effects crashes have on Earth and other planets.”

Hayne expects the influences obliterated the rocket instantly, creating a white flash that could be visible if any spacecraft were in save with a vantage point. 

“It will be the moon’s newest archaeological site,” writes residence archaeologist Alice Gorman. “We’ll learn something about the geology of the residence from the color differences and distribution of the depressed material. It’s an opportunity to learn more about the moon’s mysterious far side.”

Besides adding a new feature to the dark side of the moon, there’s some disaster it could also introduce tiny hitchhikers to our natural satellite. 

“So I’m not bothered by one more crater inhabit made on the moon,” David Rothery, professor of planetary geosciences at the UK’s Open University, wrote in The Conversation. “It already has something like half a billion craters that are 10 meters or more in diameter. What we should worry about is contaminating the moon with living microbes, or molecules that could in the future be erroneous as evidence of former life on the moon.”

The European Space Agency originated a statement last month raising its concern that not enough is inhabit done to track space junk, as NASA and others hope to save a permanent presence on the moon.

“The upcoming lunar influences illustrates well the need for a comprehensive regulatory regime in residence, not only for the economically crucial orbits around Earth but also applying to the moon,” said Holger Krag, head of ESA’s residence safety program.

This isn’t the first time a spacecraft has slammed into the moon, although Gray thinks it grand be the first time it’s happening unintentionally. As recently as 2009, NASA slammed its Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (Lcross) into the surface in a behold for water (it found some). 

“In essence,” Gray says, “this is a ‘free’ Lcross.”