Cylindrical remains of a rocket wandering for years through the universe crashed today against the “hidden face” of the Luna at a speed of more than 9,000 kilometers per hour and “it is likely that they caused a crater between 10 and 20 meters in diameter”, according to astronomers.
The impact occurred at 12:25 GMT in the hidden face of the moonaccording to astronomer Bill Gray, who was the first to identify the looming collision.
“We had a lot of data on this object,” Gray told the AFP news agency, which estimates it hit the Luna “this morning”.
The identification of the rocket in question was the subject of debate because no one officially deals with recording and tracking space debris in deep space.
Gray, creator of the software used by NASA-funded observation programs, keeps an eye on them so they aren’t mistaken for asteroids and so time isn’t wasted futilely studying them.
Initially it was thought that the remains were from a SpaceX rocket but in the end it was deduced that it was a Chinese ship, specifically a stage of the Long March rocket, which took off in 2014 for a mission called Chang’e 5-T1, as part of the country’s lunar exploration program.
Beijing denied it and assured that the stage had “entered safely into the earth’s atmosphere” and had “completely burned”.
But according to Gray, China confused two missions with similar names and was actually talking about a rocket launched much later.
In any case, the crater can only be seen through the LRO probe (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) of the NASA or the Indian Chandrayaan-2, both in orbit around this star.
The US space agency confirmed that it wanted to find the crater, but warned that the operation could take “weeks”.
It’s not unusual for rocket stages to be left behind in the cosmos, but it’s the first time an unintended collision with the Moon has been identified.
In the past, rocket stages were launched against the star for scientific purposes.