JAKARTA – A few weeks ago, information circulated that SpaceX’s second stage Falcon 9 rocket would hit the Moon on March 4, and it became a strong criticism for the company. However, this prediction turned out to be wrong.
Falcon 9 rockets will not actually attack the Moon. Recent observations say it was a Chinese rocket. The second stage Falcon 9 rocket was used for the launch of the NOAA Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, mission in 2015.
One of the astronomers who wrote the Project Pluto software (to track near-Earth objects) as well as who stated the Moon collision event, Bill Gray admitted his observations were wrong.
Gray explained that in 2015, he and other observers discovered an unidentified object in the sky and gave it a temporary name, WE0913A.
Further observations indicated that it might be a man-made object, and then the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket became the prime candidate.
“I think it’s the DSCOVR or the hardware associated with it. Further data confirms that yes, WE0913A has crossed the Moon two days after the launch of DSCOVR, and I and others accept the identification with the second stage as correct,” Gray said, as quoted by Reuters. Ars TechnicaMonday, February 14th.
“The object has the brightness we expected, and has appeared at the expected time and is moving in a reasonable orbit.”
It may be a harmless mistake, but a false Falcon 9 rocket prediction will affect SpaceX founder Elon Musk. After all, Musk is a global celebrity, of course this will be big news around the world.
Meanwhile, engineer Jon Giorgini at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was the first to realize that this object was not actually the top of a Falcon 9 rocket.
He explains to Gray that the DSCOVR spacecraft’s trajectory is not too close to the Moon. Therefore, the second stage would be very unlikely to attack the Moon. This prompted Gray to dig through his data and identify other potential candidates.
Thanks to Giorgini’s statement, Gray discovers that it is a Chinese rocket. He saw the China mission Chang’e 5-T1 launch in October 2014 on a Long March 3C rocket.
This Moon mission sent a small spacecraft to the Moon as a preliminary test for a sample return mission. The launch timing and trajectory of the Moon is almost exactly the same as the orbit of the object that will hit the Moon in March.
“In a sense, this remains circumstantial evidence. But I would consider it quite convincing evidence. So I believe that the object that will hit the Moon on March 4, 2022 at 12:25 UTC is actually the Chang’e 5-T1 rocket stage ,” explained Gray.
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