NASA filmed the crash site of the mysterious rocket that crashed on the far side of the moon in March, and the unidentified spacecraft left behind a strange double crater, which puzzled scientists.
Photographs of the crash site were taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on May 25 and released on June 24. The photos show that the wayward debris (whose origin is still disputed) somehow killed two overlapping craters when they crashed on the far side of the the moon traveling at approximately 5 770 mph (9 290 km / h).
Unexpected double craters add an extra layer of strangeness to the mystery that has confused space observers from Januarywhen Bill Gray, an American astronomer and software developer who tracks objects near Earth, predicted that orbital space debris would hit the far side of the moon in a few months, Live Science reported earlier. When Gray first spotted the wreckage, he speculated that it was the second stage of Elon Musk’s Falcon X rocket launched in 2015. But later observations and analysis of orbital data suggested that the object had been uses the upper stage of the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 missilespacecraft (named after the Chinese goddess of the moon) which started in 2014. However, Chinese officials disagree, claiming that the upper stage of this missile burned in on the ground atmosphere years ago.
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To date, at least 47 NASA rockets have crashed into the moon, according to Arizona State Universitybut “the double crater was unexpected,” NASA said writes in a statement. “No other rocket strike on the moon has created double craters.
Although scientists were unable to directly observe the moment of impact, experts predicted that the dropped rocket hit the lunar surface in the Herzsprung crater on the far side of the moon on March 4 at 7:25 EST (12:25 GMT). LRO observations show the two depressions on the lunar surface – the eastern crater is 59 feet (18 meters) wide, while the western crater is 52.5 feet (16 meters) in diameter. If NASA’s LRO had been positioned to capture images of the impact, it would probably have documented a jet 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 officials said.
“Usually the spent rocket has a mass concentrated at the end of the engine; the rest of the rocket stage consists mainly of an empty fuel tank,” the statement said.
Is it really the booster of Chang’e 5-T1?
Since the rocket accelerator is likely to have completely disintegrated on impact, it is uncertain whether the crater investigation will provide any major evidence of its disputed origin. But some astronomers believe most of the mystery has already been solved. Gray writes in his blog soon after the images were published, the subject was “quite categorically identified as the Chang’e 5-T1 amplifier.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s no other way,” Gray told Live Science. “At this point, we rarely get something so safe.”
Gray made his first prediction that the controversial debris would collide with the moon after it was spotted rolling into space in March 2015. The object (given the temporary name WE0913A) was first spotted by Catalina Sky Survey, an array of telescopes. near Tucson, Arizona, which is scanning our space neighborhood for dangerous asteroids that could crash into Earth. However, WE0913A was not in orbit the sunsuch as asteroid would, but instead orbited the Earth. Gray suspected that the object was man-made.
After initially misidentifying the mysterious debris as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Gray returned to the data to find that another spacecraft almost coincided with the trajectory of the wreckage associated with the moon: the upper stage of the Chinese mission Chang’e 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 have denied that the space debris is theirs, insisting that the Chang’e 5 rocket had already burned on its return to Earth in 2014. But US experts have disputed the claim, suggesting that Chinese officials could mix the rocket from 2014 with a rocket with a similar design from a mission in 2020 and that the first was what hit the moon. On March 1, the U.S. Department of Defense Space Command, which tracks space debris in low orbit, released a statement saying the 2014 Chinese rocket never went out of orbit.
Gray believes that his orbital data, which almost coincides with the original trajectory of the Chinese rocket, is convincing.
“There are an awful lot of lunar missions in orbit; its inclination means that in the past it was directed over China; walked east the way Chinese lunar missions do; and its expected launch time 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 for the first 19 days of its flight, and the trajectory data sent back by that satellite matched the current trajectory of the rocket’s debris perfectly, according to Gray. Others have also identified important clues that support Gray’s conclusion; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Center for near-Earth research confirmed Gray’s orbital data analysis, and a team from the University of Arizona identified the rocket as part of the Chang’e 5-T1 mission by analyzing the light spectrum reflected by the paint. on the broken debris. .
Although this is the first space debris to inadvertently collide with the moon, this is not the first time a man-made satellite has crashed there. In 2009, NASA’s lunar crater observation satellite was deliberately launched at the moon’s south pole at 5,600 miles per hour (9,000 km / h), triggering a jet that allowed scientists to detect chemical signatures on water ice. NASA also dropped Saturn V rockets from the Apollo program by launching them to the moon.
Gray said the confusion over the object’s identity underscores the real need for space agencies and private companies everywhere to develop better procedures to track the rockets they send into deep space (which would also prevent such objects from being mistaken for Earth-threatening asteroids).
“From my selfish point of view, that would help us track asteroids better,” Gray said. “The care given to satellites in low Earth orbit was not applied to those in high Earth orbit because people thought it really didn’t matter. We hope that with the United States now considering returning to the moon and sending other countries there, that attitude may change. “
Originally published in Live Science.
