A rocket hit the moon on March 4, 2022, creating a double crater.
Image: NASA / Goddard / Arizona State University
Astronomers have finally identified the site of the impact of a mysterious rocket that curiously created two craters on the dark side of the moon.
Part of the rocket hit the moon on March 4, but astronomers announced the discovery of the crash site only last week. There is now an eastern crater on the moon with a diameter of about 18 meters (19.5 yards), which is superimposed on a western crater with a diameter of 16 meters (17.5 yards).
According to NASA, the double crater could indicate that the rocket’s body has large masses at each end. So far, no other rocket crashes on the moon have created double craters, although the craters of Apollo SIV-B were larger.
SEE: NASA’s helicopter on Mars has a problem. This clever software trick can fix it
Neither NASA nor other astronomers have been able to confirm which nation or company the rocket belongs to.
“Usually a spent rocket has a mass concentrated at the end of the engine; the rest of the rocket phase consists mainly of an empty fuel tank, ”said Mark Robinson, a professor at NASA’s School of Earth and Space Research at Arizona State University. press release.
“As the origin of the rocket’s body remains uncertain, the dual nature of the crater may indicate its identity.”
Robinson is also the lead researcher on NASA’s lunar reconnaissance orbital chamber and a new NASA lunar imaging experiment called ShadowCam.
According to the New York Times, there was speculation in January that the rocket was the second stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9, which was launched in 2015 on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for its DSCOVR Deep Space Observatory project. But later this was ruled out.
Bill Gray, developer of Project Pluto’s astronomical software, first spotted the rocket in January and tracked it as it approached the moon.
SEE: NASA postpones its mission to the asteroid Psyche
In January, he told Ars Technica that this was part of the Falcon 9, but a NASA engineer said the launch trajectory did not match the rocket’s orbit.
Gray later concluded that the likely candidate was a Long March 3C rocket fired from China in 2014.
But the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on February 21 that “the upper stage of the rocket associated with the Chang’e-5 mission has entered the Earth’s atmosphere and burned completely.”
Gray disagrees with China’s assessment and believes that “two different, but with similar names, lunar missions have mixed.”
He also argues that some official agency such as the U.S. space force or a potentially international agency should track space debris in far space, not just objects like lower-orbiting astroids.
“Many more spacecraft are already entering high orbits, and some of them will take crews to the moon. “Such rubbish will no longer be just a nuisance to a small group of astronomers,” Gray wrote in his blog on Project Pluto.
Add Comment