The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), dubbed “NASA’s Eye in the Sky” in orbit around the Moon, has found the crash site of the mysterious booster rocket that crashed into the far side of the Moon on March 4.
Surprisingly, the LRO images, taken on May 25, revealed that the impact crater, which was formed by the impact of the missile, is actually two craters, an eastern crater (18 meters in diameter) superimposed on a western crater (16 meters in diameter), which It is a new mystery for astronomers to uncover.
The double crater was unexpected, and might indicate that the missile body had large masses at each end.
“Usually the spent rocket mass is concentrated at the end of the engine, and the rest of the rocket stage consists essentially of an empty fuel tank,” explained Mark Robinson, principal investigator on the LRO camera team. Since the origin of the missile body remains uncertain, the dual nature of the crater may help establish its identity.
Since the origin of the missile body remains uncertain, the dual nature of the crater may indicate its identity.
No other rocket object on the Moon has produced double craters.
The unidentified rocket first caught the attention of astronomers earlier this year when it was identified as the upper stage of a SpaceX rocket, which launched NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory to Lagrange Point in 2015.
The investigative work led to the determination that the object was in fact the upper stage of China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission, a 2014 technology demonstration mission that laid the groundwork for Chang’e 5, which successfully returned a lunar sample to Earth in 2020.