A few weeks ago, we learned that the upper stage of a Falcon 9 was going to hit the Moon on March 4th. But the researcher behind the find has just admitted his mistake. The debris that will crash into our satellite would rather come from an old Chinese rocket.
Astronomer Bill Gray made a notable discovery last month: a piece of rocket about to crash into the moon. According to his calculations, confirmed by other researchers, this space debris will hit our satellite on March 4th. Until then, Gray thought it was the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket sent into space on February 11, 2015 to deploy the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). This one had been sailing in space since that time, having failed to return to Earth.
Problem, the forecast of the astronomer finally proved to be inaccurate. Instead of a SpaceX rocket, a Chinese rocket is about to dig a crater on the dark side of the moon. The researcher acknowledged the error on his Project Pluto site after being contacted by engineer Jon Giorgini of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Gray and other observers had detected an unidentified object which they tentatively named WE0913A. Luminosity, timing, orbit… Several clues had led them to believe that it was a fragment of Falcon 9 mobilized for the DSCOVR.
A piece of Chinese rocket will crash into the Moon
After the media coverage of the affair, Jon Giorgin contacted Gray to inform him that the DSCOVR and its rocket were not near the Moon, two days after the launch. “It would be rather weird if the second stage passed right in front of the Moon, while DSCOVR was wandering around in another part of the cosmos”, recognizes the observer. After scouring the archives, he finally identified a launch that might match. It would be the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 mission powered by a Long March 3C rocket. Launched on October 23, 2014, it aimed to prepare for the dispatch of the Chang’e 5 probe responsible for collecting lunar samples.
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After reconstructing the mission’s probable orbit and trajectory, he found that the rocket matched the profile of the mysterious debris that had approached the Moon on October 28, 2014. “I am therefore convinced that the object about to hit the moon on March 4, 2022 at 12:25 UTC is actually a stage of the Chang’e 5-T1 mission rocket”says Bill Gray firmly.
Source : Project Pluto