Gray and others have kept an eye on it over the years, noting whenever the object popped up in telescope observations of asteroids. Back then, he believed that it was an abandoned rocket booster from a recent SpaceX launch, which had deployed a satellite mission for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration the orbital data and the timing seemed to line up.
#Chinese rocket crash moon software#
Gray, who is well known in the space community for monitoring objects in orbit-he provided the tracking software that helped pinpoint a space rock that used to orbit Earth like a second moon-first noticed the debris in 2015. But this latest incident appears to be the first of its kind: entirely unplanned. The first spacecraft to ever reach the lunar surface, for example, smashed into it on purpose in 1959 because the Soviet Union was eager to beat the United States to it, even if it meant destroying a probe. But we’ve usually done it for specific reasons, such as national glory or scientific curiosity. Humankind has actually been chucking stuff at the moon for decades, and not just astronauts. When you think about it that way, we’re kind of throwing trash at the moon. The hardware, no longer useful after a successful launch, was just discarded in space. “It would almost completely cover a basketball court,” Bill Gray, an amateur astronomer who tracks space objects, told me.Īccording to Gray, the space junk turned out to be a discarded rocket booster from a Chinese mission that sent a spacecraft toward the moon in 2014. Astronomers can’t see the aftermath yet but, based on the size of this thing, they believe that the impact has scooped out a new crater as wide as 20 meters, or 65 feet.
The hardware came barreling head-on at the lunar surface at 5,800 miles an hour, into an existing, enormous crater. The debris, a piece of a rocket about the size of a school bus, had been floating in space for seven years.
This morning, a piece of space junk smacked right into the far side of the moon. Today, because of human beings and their little space things, Earth’s celestial companion got one more dent. Space rocks are still at it, and every year the bombardment scoops out dozens of craters big enough for moon-orbiting spacecraft to notice. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.The moon is a wonderland of craters-thousands of them, carved by asteroids hitting the surface over billions of years. One user, for example, shared a gif of a UFO.Īnother simply wrote, “We are lucky it struck the moon, huh?” People on NASA’s Twitter post regarding the mystery rocket’s crash put forward some more, shall we say, out-of-these world theories. “I’m 99.9 percent sure it’s the China 5-T1,” tells Bill Gray-an astronomer who created software that tracks space objects-to the BBC. The Sydney Morning Herald continues to report that theories of the rocket’s origins abound: Some think it came from SpaceX while others put forward the belief that the rocket is a Chang’e 5-T1 from the 2014 Chinese lunar mission. That and the fact, as the Miami Herald points out, that no one has taken responsibility of the rocket or its actions. The release notes that “no other rocket body impacts on the Moon created double craters,” adding to this rocket’s mysterious nature. “Since the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the double nature of the crater may indicate its identity.” “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,” reads the release. The resulting collision was picked up by the agency’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which showed via images that two craters had been created from the impact.
A rocket reportedly crashed into the moon back in March.Īnd the weird thing is no one has any idea as to where it came from.Īccording to a NASA press release, astronomers first noticed a “rocket body” heading towards the moon late last year.
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