remaining rocket It will hit the far side of the Moon at 5,800 mph (9,300 kph) on Friday, away from the prying eyes of telescopes. Confirming the impact through satellite images can take weeks, even months.
Experts believe that it has been wobbling randomly through space, since China launched it nearly a decade ago. But Chinese officials suspect it is theirs.
No matter whose it is, scientists expect the object to pierce 33 feet to 66 feet (10 to 20 meters) across and send moon dust Flying hundreds of miles (kilometers) over a barren, distorted surface.
Tracking down low-orbiting space junk is relatively easy. Objects launched deep into space are unlikely to be hit by anything and these far-flung pieces are usually soon forgotten, except by a handful of observers who enjoy playing celestial detective.
SpaceX basically took the rap for the upcoming lunar litter when asteroid tracker Bill Gray identified the collision course in January. He corrected himself a month later, saying the “mystery” object was not a SpaceX Falcon rocket upper stage from the 2015 launch of a deep space climate observatory for NASA.
Gray said it was likely the third stage of the Chinese rocket that sent a test sample capsule to the Moon and back in 2014. But Chinese ministry officials said the upper stage re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up.
But there were two Chinese missions with similar designations – the test flight and the 2020 lunar sample return mission – and US observers believe the two are getting mixed up.
The US Space Command, which tracks lower space junk, confirmed on Tuesday that the Chinese upper stage never deviated from the 2014 lunar mission, as previously indicated in its database. But it could not confirm the country of origin for the object that hit the Moon.
“We focus on near-Earth objects,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Mathematician and physicist Gray said he now believed it was China’s rocket.
“I’ve become a little more cautious with cases like this. But I really don’t see a way to be anything else,” he said.
Jonathan McDowell of Harvard and the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics supports Gray’s revised assessment, but notes: “The effect will be the same. It will leave another small crater on the moon.”
The Moon already has countless craters, up to 1,600 miles (2,500 kilometers) in length. With little or no real atmosphere, the Moon is defenseless against a constant barrage of meteors and asteroids, and the ever-present spacecraft, some of which have been deliberately crashed for the sake of science. With no weather, no erosion occurs and hence the impact crater remains forever.
China has a lunar lander on the far side of the Moon, but Friday’s impact just north of the equator would be too far to detect. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will also be out of range. It is unlikely that Chandrayaan-2, orbiting India’s moon, will pass by then.
“I had been expecting some (important) moon collisions for a long time. Ideally, it would have hit the near side of the Moon at some point, where we could actually see it,” Gray said.
After initially pinning down Elon Musk’s upcoming strike at SpaceX, Gray takes another look after an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory questioned his claim. Now, he’s “very well agreed” this is a Chinese rocket part, based not only on orbital tracking at 2014 liftoff, but also data from its short-lived ham radio experiment.
JPL’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies supports Gray’s reappraisal. A team from the University of Arizona recently identified the Chinese Long March rocket segment from the light reflected off its paint, during a telescope observation of the caregiver cylinder.
It is about 40 feet (12 m) long and 10 feet (3 m) in diameter, and does so every two to three minutes.
Gray said SpaceX never contacted him to challenge his original claim. There is no sugar either.
“It’s not a SpaceX problem, nor is it a China problem. No one is particularly careful about what they do with junk in orbit like this,” Gray said.
According to McDowell, the survivors of such deep space missions are hard to track down. The Moon’s gravity can alter an object’s path during the flyby, creating uncertainty. And there is no readily available database, McDowell noted, aside from being “put together” by himself, Gray, and a few others.
“We are now in an era where many countries and private companies are keeping stuff in deep space, so it’s time to keep track of it,” McDowell said. “No one right now, few fans in their spare time.”
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.
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