The acceleration stage of the Long March 3C missile from the Chang´e 5-T1 mission, which was launched in 2014 as part of Chinese moon research, will hit the moon’s surface on March 4. We wrote in February with reference to new reports.
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It is expected to fall specifically in the area of the giant lunar crater Hertzsprung.
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China disagrees
At first, astronomers thought it was the top stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which was launched in 2015 by the SpaceX program of billionaire and businessman Elon Musk. However, they later mentioned the strong assumption that these were the remnants of the Chinese apparatus from 2014. However, China denies this.
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Chinese officials claim that the artificial object, which will probably hit the moon in the next tens of minutes, cannot be the rest of its launch vehicle from the Chang’e 5-T1 mission. In a statement recently, the Chinese said the facility had “completely burned” in the Earth’s atmosphere.
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Part of the rocket was first seen from Earth in March 2015. A space exploration funded by NASA in Arizona spotted it, but according to the BBC, it quickly lost interest when it turned out that the object was not an asteroid.
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Image of the lunar reverse side
Photo: Profimedia.cz
And so came American amateur astronomer Bill Gray, a software developer from Maine who first noticed the trajectory of the object. His software captured the impact in an orbital model, after which Gray worked with observatories around the world to gather more data and strengthen the credibility of his prediction.
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He and other researchers have since confirmed the thesis that it is part of a Chinese rocket, including a leading observer in Earth’s orbit, Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at Harvard University, the CNET server said.
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So the rocket about to hit the Moon, it turns out, is not the one we thought it was. This (an honest mistake) just emphasizes the problem with lack of proper tracking of these deep space objects. https://t.co/JXKpUmEC2X
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) February 13, 2022
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Bill Gray stands by his way despite China. It was supported, for example, by scientist Vishnu Reddy from the University of Arizona, whose laboratory performed its own spectral analysis of the object. “We picked up the spectrum and compared it to Chinese and SpaceX-like rockets – and they match the Chinese rocket,” he told SpaceNews.
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Gray was wrong at first
However, Gray himself admitted in mid-February that he was wrong when he stated that the SpaceX rocket was in collision course with the Moon. A rocket will hit it in March, but not the American one, but the Chinese one, The Guardian wrote at the time.
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“This only highlights the problem of the missing tracing of these objects in space,” said McDowell, who advocates better control of so-called space debris, as dysfunctional, human-launched objects in space are called. E.g. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates that there are now 36,500 pieces of space debris larger than 10 centimeters in orbit.
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“The object had the clarity we would expect, it appeared in the expected times and moved in the expected orbit,” he added, as could the mistake. He then admitted that he was retrospectively aware that he might have noticed characters that did not match SpaceX’s motion.
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The impact – probably Chinese – of the rocket and the resulting impact crater are also intended to be studied by NASA, which at the end of January (when it was still considered Falcon 9) stated that it was an “exciting research opportunity”. The effects of the impact on the Moon are expected to be small, but it may create a new small crater. The scientists hope to study the estimated 10-20 meter wide crater and the layers of lunar dust created by the impact in the future.
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