4000 kg 'rocket' is about to hit the moon!
The debris of the rocket, which has been circling in space for seven years, is now about to hit the Moon. This will create a new crater in the dark side of the Moon, which will not be able to go through the Earth.
A rocket launched in 2015 could hit the Moon in a few weeks. This fast-moving piece of space debris is the upper part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that carried the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite from Earth. Since then it has been randomly orbiting the Earth and the Moon. Asteroid watcher Bill Gray has been keeping an eye on the 4-ton booster since the rocket's launch.
They learned this month that their orbit-tracking software predicted that the booster would hit the lunar surface on March 4, moving at more than 9,000 kilometers per hour. The booster is going through a lot of acrobatics as it moves forward, due to which it is difficult to predict exactly how fast and when it will hit the surface of the Moon. It is likely to collide on the other side of the Moon, so it will not be visible from Earth.
Collision not 'big deal' but exciting moment
He said that some astronomers say the collision is "no big deal," but for a space archaeologist like me, it is quite exciting. If it collides with the surface of the Moon, a new crater will be formed in the dark part of the Moon. The first man-made object to make contact with the Moon was the Soviet Luna 2 in 1959. That was an extraordinary achievement as it happened only two years after the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1.
'Bomb' explodes on Moon when seen from Earth
The mission consisted of a rocket, a probe and three 'bombs'. A bomb released a cloud of sodium gas so that the collision could be seen from Earth. The then Soviet Union did not want the unprecedented mission to be called a 'rumour'. Various spacecraft have been ejected from orbit in the past, like the Japanese relay satellite Okina in 2009. Others were deliberately crashed after the completion of their term. NASA's Ebb and Flow spacecraft intentionally crashed into the Moon's south pole in 2012.
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