A Dead Chinese Rocket Is Crashing Into the Moon on Friday, and Scientists Can't Wait:
The strange story of a big hunk of space junk that's on a collision course with the moon comes to an explosive end Friday, and astronomers are eager to view the fallout.
An old rocket booster once thought to be the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9, but now believed to be from the Chinese Chang'e 5-T1 mission (although China denies this), will slam into the moon's far side at over 5,000 miles per hour.
Bill Gray, an amateur astronomer and software developer in Maine, first noticed the terminal trajectory. His software picked up the impact in an orbital model and Gray worked with observatories around the world to gather additional data and increase his confidence in the prediction.
[...] "I am astounded that we can tell the difference between the two rocket body options -- SpaceX versus Chinese -- and confirm which one will impact the moon with the data we have," Adam Battle, a planetary science graduate student at the University of Arizona said in a statement in February. "The differences we see are primarily due to type of paint used by SpaceX and the Chinese."
In a blog post, Gray wrote that "with all the data, we've got a certain impact at March 4 12:25:58 Universal Time (4:25 a.m. PT)." Jonathan McDowell, a leading watcher of orbit and everything near Earth in space, confirmed the prediction.
The rocket will crash into the lunar surface in a crater named Hertzsprung that's a little larger than the state of Iowa. The location is remote enough that the impact doesn't pose any threat to the Apollo mission or other space program landing sites.
"The upcoming rocket impact will provide a fortuitous experiment that could reveal a lot about how natural collisions pummel and scour planetary surfaces," University of Colorado Boulder planetary scientist Paul Hayne writes for The Conversation.
[...] Hayne expects the impact will obliterate the rocket instantly and create a white flash that could be visible if any spacecraft were in place with a vantage point. That doesn't seem likely, however. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter won't be in a position to start taking photos of the impact site until mid-March.
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Mystery Rocket Crashes Into Moon but No Country Will Take Credit
You may recall this story from March: A Dead Chinese Rocket is Crashing Into the Moon on Friday, and Scientists Can't Wait. It seems that nobody wants to admit to owning it - but NASA have now got a picture that might help resolve that question.
Mystery rocket crashes into Moon but no country will take credit:
NASA scientists are baffled by a mystery spacecraft that crashed into the moon, creating two large craters.
The rocket has been tracked through space since 2015, but no one has claimed it. It was travelling at more than 5 kilometres a second when it hit the lunar surface on March 4 this year – and new images by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show that the impact was unlike anything they had seen before.
"Surprisingly, the crater is actually two craters, an eastern one (18m diameter) superimposed on a western one (16m diameter)," scientists from NASA and Arizona State University wrote in a post.
"The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the body had large masses at each end. Typically a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the motor end; the rest of the rocket stage mainly consists of an empty fuel tank. Since the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the double nature of the crater may indicate its identity."
Amateur astronomers first pointed the finger at SpaceX, but then recalculated it was likely to be from a 2014 Chinese lunar mission (Chang'e 5-T1). China has contested this, saying that booster had "safely entered the Earth's atmosphere and was completely incinerated".
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2022, @12:54AM
Only good chinese rocket is dead chinese rocket.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2022, @02:19AM (1 child)
We know where Aristarchus is, and why he hasn't been posting for a while.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2022, @02:34AM
As usual he'll miscalculate, come up short and blame the nazis. [historynewsnetwork.org]
(Score: 2, Funny) by looorg on Friday March 04 2022, @02:30AM (6 children)
Is this the third or fourth story about this rocket? I wish it would just slam into the moon already ... Are we there yet?!
If it kills all life on the moon (haha!) nobody will want credit. If something fantastic or interesting happen nobody will want to share it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2022, @03:04AM (2 children)
The question is: if all these scientists can't wait, what are they gonna do about it?
Or more accurately, why insert emotions in such a headline?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday March 04 2022, @04:29AM (1 child)
If they really can't wait, may I suggest they find something else to do in the meantime?
(Score: 3, Touché) by PiMuNu on Friday March 04 2022, @07:42AM
"A watched pot never boils"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 04 2022, @04:33PM (2 children)
Four stories and it's still an alleged rocket of allegedly Chinese origin!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2022, @10:50PM (1 child)
It was a big deal and major problem when it was allegedly a SpaceX rocket. Now that it's only an allegedly Chinese rocket it's back to being a minor curiosity. Is that racist?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @03:13AM
There is no such thing as racism against musky incels. They've come from space to steal our women.
(Score: 4, Funny) by MIRV888 on Friday March 04 2022, @05:57AM
It's not rocket science.
Oh wait... It is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2022, @11:18PM
The trouble is that when you crash Chinese rocket into the Moon, a few hours later you want to crash another one.