![]() So that's not the explanation for this one,” he added. But the Chang'e 5-T1 booster came in at about 15 degrees from vertical. “The theory has been going around that if this were an impact at a shallow angle, it might create an elongated or double crater (as does sometimes happen, and accounts for some elongated/double lunar craters). An asteroid tracker who predicted that a leftover SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket would slam into the Moon in March now says that the object that’s on a collision course with the lunar surface is. “But I am in no way an expert on what happens in high-speed impacts like this, except to know that they can have some very strange, non-intuitive results.” “I'm a little puzzled by this,” Gray writes. In a recent blog post, Gray said the location of the creator neatly ties up with his predictions of where the Chinese booster was predicted to land, although he is also confused by the strange nature of the double crater. A rocket is going to crash into the moon: Accidental experiment on the physics of impacts in space. While it was initially suspected to be part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, later evidence suggested it was a booster from the Chang'e 5-T1 lunar mission. Students confirm errant rockets Chinese origin, track lunar collision course. In 2019, Israel's crashed Beresheet spacecraft scattered debris on the lunar surface.Earlier this year, astronomical software designer Bill Gray predicted that a disused rocket booster would hit the lunar surface in March. ![]() Rocket boosters from the Apollo missions left a number of craters some 40 yards wide on the Moon's surface. There are hundreds of pieces of debris on the surface of the Moon, as well as lunar landers and even astronauts' faeces in ziplock bags. Rocket debris from Chinas largest rocket fell through Earths atmosphere China landed on the moon and found water in dirt and. The impact won’t pose a risk to the moon or its orbit, but it will carve. Astronauts' faeces in ziplock bags left on Moon A large chunk of space junk that’s part of a Chinese rocket is headed for a crash landing on the surface of the moon. He had previously thought it was a SpaceX booster. ![]() "I'm 99.9 per cent sure it's the China 5-T1," he told the BBC. China has contested this, saying that the booster in question had "safely entered the Earth's atmosphere and was completely incinerated".īill Gray, an independent astronomer who created software which tracks objects in space, had to work backwards and compute an approximate orbit, because although China announces and televises its launches, it does not reveal their routes. Since the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the double nature of the crater may indicate its identity."Īmateur astronomers first pointed the finger at SpaceX, but then recalculated that it was likely to be from a 2014 Chinese lunar mission (Chang'e 5-T1). Typically a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the motor end the rest of the rocket stage mainly consists of an empty fuel tank. ![]() “The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the rocket body had large masses at each end. “Surprisingly the crater is actually two craters, an eastern crater (18-metre diameter, about 19.5 yards) superimposed on a western crater (16-metre diameter, about 17.5 yards),” the agency said in a statement. The vast hunk of metal was travelling at 3.3 miles a second when it smashed into the Lunar surface on March 4, but new images taken by Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show that the impact was unlike anything they had seen before. No one on Earth has claimed responsibility for owning the rocket, and Nasa cannot explain why the impact created two craters when it crashed. Circling in space for 7 years, a spacecraft from China was misidentified as an Elon Musk SpaceX rocket. A mystery rocket has crashed into the Moon, creating a large double crater, leaving Nasa scientists baffled at who was behind the launch and why its impact was spread over two distinct areas. A Chinese booster not a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket hit the far side of moon today.
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