An unwanted space rocket will hit the moon on Friday | international | News

The moon is about to collide on Friday with three tons of space debris He will dig a hole in which several trailers can fit.

The remaining rocket will smash into the far side of the moon at 9,300 km/h, out of the prying eyes of telescopes. It can take weeks, even months, to confirm the effect with satellite images.

Experts believe it has been orbiting space since China launched it nearly a decade ago. But the Chinese authorities suspect that it belongs to him.

Regardless of its identity, scientists expect the object will cause a hole 10 to 20 meters in diameter, sending moon dust hundreds of kilometers from the barren and scarred surface.

Celestial investigators are searching for space debris

It is relatively easy to track space debris in low orbit. Deeper things rarely collide with anything, and these distant pieces are often forgotten, except for a handful of watchers who enjoy playing the celestial detective.

SpaceX originally took charge of the next lunar brood after tracking the asteroid Bill Gray will set the crash course in January. He corrected himself a month later, saying the “mysterious” object was not an upper stage of SpaceX’s Falcon rocket. Launch of NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory in 2015.

Chinese missile?

Gray said it was likely the third stage of a Chinese rocket that sent a test sample capsule to the moon and back in 2014. But Chinese ministry officials said the upper stage reentered Earth’s atmosphere and collapsed.

But There were two Chinese missions with similar categories – 2020 lunar test flight and sample return mission – US observers think they get it wrong.

The US Space Command, which tracks low-lying space debris, confirmed Tuesday that China’s upper stage of the 2014 lunar mission never de-orbited, as previously reported in its database. But he could not confirm the country of origin of the object that was about to collide with the moon.

“We are focusing on the things closest to Earth,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Gray, the mathematician and physicist, said he was now certain it was a Chinese missile. “I’ve become a little more cautious about these issues,” he said. “But I really don’t see how anything else could be.”

However, he clarified, “It’s not a SpaceX problem nor a China problem. Nobody is particularly keen on what they do with junk in this kind of orbit,” Gray said.

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics and the Smithsonian supports Gray’s revised assessment, but notes: “The effect will be the same. And you’ll leave another small crater on the moon.”

Eternal craters on the moon

The moon already has countless craters, reaching 2,500 km. The Moon has no atmosphere, and is defenseless against the constant bombardment of meteors, asteroids, and accidental spacecraft. that arrive, and some that are intentionally destroyed for scientific reasons. With no weather, there is no wear, so impact craters are eternal.

China has a lunar lander on the far side of the moon, but it will be too far from detecting Friday’s impact north of the equator. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will also be out of range. It is also unlikely that the Indian spacecraft, Chandrayaan-2, will pass into orbit around the Moon.

“I’ve been waiting for a long time for something (of important) to arrive on the moon. Ideally, it would hit the near side of the moon, at a point we can see.” (me)