NASA has photographed the crash site of the mysterious rocket that crashed into the far side of the moon in March, and the unidentified spacecraft left behind a strange double crater that has scientists baffled.
Images of the crash site were taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on May 25 and released the 24th of June. The photos show that the rogue debris (the origins of which are still disputed) somehow punched two overlapping craters when it crashed into the other side of the Moon traveling at approximately 5,770 mph (9,290 km/h).
The unexpected dual craters add an extra layer of strangeness to a mystery that has long stumped space observers. since January, when Bill Gray, an American astronomer and software developer that tracks near-Earth objects, predicted that the orbiting piece of space junk would hit the far side of the moon in a matter of months, Live Science previously reported. When Gray first saw the debris, he suggested it was the second stage of a Falcon X rocket launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2015. But subsequent observations and analysis of orbital data hinted that the object was the object. expended upper stage of Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 rocketa space ship (named for the Chinese goddess of the moon) which was launched in 2014. However, Chinese officials disagreed, stating that the upper stage of this rocket burned up in from the earth atmosphere years ago.
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To date, at least 47 NASA rocket bodies have crashed into the moon, according to Arizona State Universitybut “the double crater was unexpected”, NASA wrote in a statement. “No other rocket body impact on the Moon created double craters.”
Although scientists were unable to directly observe the moment of impact, experts predicted that the discarded rocket stage struck the lunar surface at Hertzsprung crater on the far side of the moon on March 4 at 7:25 a.m. EST (12 :25 GMT). LRO observations show the two indentations in the lunar surface: the eastern crater is 59 feet (18 meters) wide, while the western crater is 52.5 feet (16 m) wide. Had NASA’s LRO positioned itself to capture images of the impact, it likely would have documented a plume of lunar dust erupting hundreds of miles high.
Scientists are still hypothesizing what could have created the two craters. One possibility is that the craters were formed by a piece of debris that had two large masses at each end, although this scenario would be unusual, NASA representatives said.
“Typically, a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the end of the engine; the rest of the rocket stage consists primarily of an empty fuel tank,” according to the statement.
Is it really the Chang’e 5-T1 booster?
As the rocket propellant was likely to have completely disintegrated on impact, it is unclear whether the investigation of the craters will provide important clues as to its controversial origin. But some astronomers believe they have already solved most of the mystery. Gray wrote on his blog shortly after the images were released, the object is “pretty conclusively identified as the Chang’e 5-T1 booster.”
“I’m pretty convinced there’s no way it could be anything else,” Gray told LiveScience. “At this point, we rarely have anything that certain.”
Gray made his first prediction that the controversial debris would collide with the moon after it was seen circling through space in March 2015. The object (assigned the temporary name WE0913A) was first glimpsed by Catalina Sky Survey, a series of telescopes near Tucson. Arizona scanning our cosmic neighborhood for dangerous asteroids that could crash into Earth. However, WE0913A was not orbiting the sunas a asteroid it would, but it was orbiting Earth instead. Gray suspected that the object was made by humans.
After initially misidentifying the mystery debris as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Gray went back to the data to discover that another spacecraft nearly matched the trajectory of the moon-bound debris: the upper stage of the Chinese Chang’e mission. 5-T1. , which launched in October 2014 as part of a preliminary mission to send a test capsule to the Moon and back.
Chinese Foreign Ministry officials denied that the space junk is theirs and insisted that the Chang’e 5 rocket already burned up on its return trip to Earth in 2014. But US experts disputed this claim, suggesting that Chinese officials could be confusing the 2014 rocket with a similarly designated rocket from a 2020 mission, and that the former is what hit the moon. On March 1, the US Department of Defense Space Command, which tracks space debris in low-Earth orbit, issued a statement saying that the 2014 Chinese rocket never left orbit.
Gray believes his orbital data, which almost perfectly matches the Chinese rocket’s initial trajectory, is conclusive.
“It’s in the orbit that a lot of lunar missions take; its tilt means that, in the past, it was heading towards China; it was heading east in the same way that Chinese lunar missions do; and its estimated time of launch falls within 20 minutes of the Chang’e 5-T1 rocket,” Gray said.
An amateur radio satellite (or “cubesat”) was attached to Chang’e 5-T1 during the first 19 days of its flight, and the trajectory data sent back from that satellite perfectly matches the current trajectory of the rocket debris, according to Gray. . Others have also identified important clues supporting Gray’s conclusion; NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed Gray’s analysis of the orbital data, and a team from the University of Arizona identified the rocket as part of the Chang’e 5- T1 by analyzing the spectrum of light reflected by the paint on the crashed debris. .
Although this is the first piece of space debris to unintentionally collide with the moon, it is not the first time a human-made satellite has crashed there. In 2009, NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Detection Satellite was deliberately fired toward the moon’s south pole at 5,600 mph (9,000 km/h), unleashing a plume that allowed scientists to detect the chemical signatures of lunar ice. Water. NASA also got rid of the Saturn V rockets from the Apollo program by launching them at the moon.
Gray said the confusion surrounding the object’s identity highlights the real need for space travel agencies and private companies around the world to develop better procedures for tracking the rockets they send into deep space (which would also prevent such objects from confused with asteroids that threaten the Earth). .
“From my selfish point of view, it would help us track asteroids better,” Gray said. “The care given to low-Earth orbit satellites hasn’t been applied to high-Earth orbit satellites because people thought it doesn’t really matter. My hope is that now that the US is considering going back to the moon and to other countries sending things there as well, that attitude could change.”
Originally published on Live Science.
