Huge piece of space junk set to crash into the moon within days
The moon is about to get walloped by nearly three tonnes of space junk, a punch that will carve out a crater 10 to 20 metres across and send dust flying hundreds of kilometres across its pockmarked surface.
The leftover rocket will smash into the far side of the moon at 9,300 kph on Friday, away from telescopesā prying eyes. It may take weeks, even months, to confirm the impact through satellite images.
Itās been tumbling haphazardly through space, experts believe, since China launched it nearly a decade ago. But Chinese officials are dubious itās theirs.
SpaceX originally took the rap for the upcoming lunar litter after asteroid tracker Bill Gray identified the collision course in January. He corrected himself a month later, saying the āmysteryā object was not from a SpaceX Falcon rocket in 2015 but more likely the third stage of a Chinese rocket in 2014.
But Chinese ministry officials said that stage had reentered Earthās atmosphere and burned up.
The US Space Command, which tracks lower space junk, confirmed Tuesday that the Chinese upper stage from the 2014 lunar mission never deorbited, as previously indicated in its database. But it could not confirm the country of origin for the object about to strike the moon.
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Gray, a mathematician and physicist, said heās confident itās Chinaās rocket.
Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard and Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics supports Grayās revised assessment, but notes: āThe effect will be the same. Itāll leave yet another small crater on the moon.ā
The moon already bears countless craters, ranging up to 2,500 kilometres. With little to no real atmosphere, the moon is defenceless against the constant barrage of meteors and asteroids, and the occasional incoming spacecraft, including a few intentionally crashed for scienceās sake. With no weather, thereās no erosion and so impact craters last forever.
Tracking deep space mission leftovers like this is hard, according to McDowell. The moonās gravity can alter an objectās path during flybys, creating uncertainty. And thereās no readily available database, McDowell noted, aside from the ones ācobbled togetherā by himself, Gray and a couple others.
āWe are now in an era where many countries and private companies are putting stuff in deep space, so itās time to start to keep track of it,ā McDowell said. āRight now thereās no one, just a few fans in their spare time.ā
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