One thing that is certain is the object is now a crater
After years of zooming in deep space, a remnant of a Chinese rocket slammed into the Moon today, just as space tracking experts expected. At least, it should have hit the Moon at around 7:30 this morning, unless the law of gravity has changed. The collision ends the rocket's life in space and possibly leaves a brand new crater on the Moon that can be up to 65 feet wide.
The now defunct Rocket has created a lot of buzz in the past month. First, the spacecraft was never intended to hit the Moon, making it a rare piece of space debris that reached the lunar surface by accident. Additionally, there was some confusion about its identity, with various groups trying to trace where the rocket came from.
Originally, space trackers thought it was a leftover piece of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched a weather satellite in 2015. But after careful analysis, various groups of space trackers confirmed that the rocket was left over from China's Chang'e launch. e 5-T1 mission - a flight launched in 2014 to test the technology needed to bring back samples from the Moon. That mission, launched on a Chinese Long March 3C rocket, sent a spacecraft around the Moon, in an effort to see if China could send a vehicle to the Moon and then bring it back to Earth. Looking at the flight profile of the Chang'e 5-T1 mission and tracking of the mystery object, astronomers are fairly certain that part of the Long March 3C rocket remains in an extremely long orbit around Earth, only to be detected. The path to the far side of the Moon to locate.
China has tried to deny that the rocket is related to the country's space program, claiming that the rocket actually returned to our planet and fell into the atmosphere. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said during a press conference, "According to China's surveillance, the upper stage of the Chang'e-5 mission rocket safely plunged into Earth's atmosphere and completely burned up." " Trackers changed the rocket's identity after the conference in February. However, Wang may have merged his Chinese missions. Chang'e-5 was an entirely different mission that was launched in 2020, while astronomers believe this rocket stems from the Chang'e 5-T1 mission, which took place six years ago .
Some other confusion revolves around the fact that the Space Force's 18th Space Control Squadron (18SPCS) – which keeps track of space debris around Earth – noted on its tracking website that the Chang'e 5-T1 The rocket from the mission almost returned to our planet. A year after launch and burned up in our atmosphere. However, 18SPCS later confirmed in a statement to The Verge that by flight the Long March 3C did not actually re-enter our atmosphere and has been in space since launch.
Although the update to 18SPCS lends credence to the idea that the rocket is from the Chang'e 5-T1 mission, it will not definitively say that it is the object's origin. "The 18th Space Control Squadron is currently determining the appropriate updates to the Space Catalog," Major Annemarie Anicelli, chief of the Public Affairs Operations Division at US Space Command, said in an emailed statement to The Verge. "While US Space Command can confirm the CHANG'E 5-T1 rocket body never de-orbited, we cannot confirm the country of origin of the rocket body that could impact the Moon."
The reason 18SPCS doesn't have good data here is because it's not really concerned with tracking deep space debris in this way. 18SPCS is more focused on tracking space debris in close-Earth orbits, as the space environment there has become too congested. The population of objects has grown massively over the past few decades, especially since Russia intentionally destroyed one of its own satellites in November during an anti-satellite test, or ASAT test. 18SPCS claimed that once the Chang'e 5-T1 rocket passed more than 22,000 miles above Earth, their official trackers stopped following the object. They plan to modify the database, however, to reflect more up-to-date information.
But while 18SPCS can't confirm or deny the source of the space debris, astronomers are pretty sure the rocket is from Chang'e 5-T1 and is now pulverized on the lunar surface. The rocket's demise was first predicted by Bill Gray, an astronomer and asteroid tracker running Project Pluto, who had been following the rocket closely for the past few months.
Collisions really shouldn't be a cause for concern, especially since we've crashed a lot of objects on the lunar surface before. Rocket pieces from the Apollo missions to the Moon were sent to care for the Moon's surface, and NASA intentionally crashed a spacecraft into the Moon in 2009, called LCROSS, to detonate some of the lunar dirt and See what material was lurking beneath the surface. However, all those previous accidents were usually on purpose, and those that were not usually associated with a lunar lander or vehicle getting too hard to the Moon. This may be the first time that a spacecraft that should not have made it to the surface of the Moon made it there anyway. Or at least, it's the first we know of.
Gray and others have used this episode as a case for why we need better plans for disposing of our deep space debris and why we need to keep track of junk that goes to such high altitudes. Is. But now that the rocket has made an impact, what remains of it may very well be for study. The team behind NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently orbiting the Moon, say they will try to look into the aftermath of the accident if they can. Gray predicted that the rocket would probably hit the Moon in a distant crater called Hertzsprung.
"We are certainly interested in finding the impact crater and will attempt to do so in the coming weeks and months," John Keller, deputy project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, emailed The Verge in a statement. "When it does we won't be near the impact site, so we won't be able to see it directly. The onboard narrow angle cameras have enough resolution to detect the crater, but the moon is full of new impact craters , so positive identification is based on before and after images in similar lighting conditions."
Hopefully, the LRO team can find it and give us an image of the final resting place of the Long March 3C rocket, and perhaps we can use this whole test as an opportunity to see what kind of material the collision was able to dig.