A SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon after spending almost seven years hurtling through space, experts say.
The booster was originally launched from Florida in February 2015 as part of an interplanetary mission to send a space weather satellite on a journey of 1.6 million kilometers.
However, after completing a long burn of its engines and sending the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Deep Space Climate Observatory on its way to the so-called Lagrange point — a gravity-neutral position four times further than the moon and in direct line with the sun — the rocket’s second stage became derelict.
Photo: AP
At this stage, it was high enough that it did not have enough fuel to return to Earth’s atmosphere, but also “lacked the energy to escape the gravity of the Earth-moon system,” meteorologist Eric Berger wrote in a post on Ars Technica.
“So it has been following a somewhat chaotic orbit since February 2015,” Berger added.
Space observers believe the rocket — about 4 tonnes of “space junk” — is on course to intersect with the moon at a velocity of about 2.58 kilometers per second in a matter of weeks.
Bill Gray — who writes software to track near-Earth objects, asteroids, minor planets and comets — has said that the Falcon 9’s upper stage is likely to hit the far side of the moon, near the equator, on March 4.
The data analyst said in a blog post that the object “made a close lunar flyby on Jan. 5,” but is to make “a certain impact at March 4.”
“This is the first unintentional case [of space junk hitting the moon] of which I am aware,” Gray added.
The exact spot the rocket is to hit remains unclear due to the unpredictable effect of sunlight “pushing” on the rocket and “ambiguity in measuring rotation periods,” which might slightly alter its orbit.
“These unpredictable effects are very small. But they will accumulate between now and March 4,” Gray wrote, adding that further observations were needed to refine the precise time and location of the impact.
As for whether the collision could be viewed from Earth, Gray said that it would probably go unobserved.
“The bulk of the moon is in the way, and even if it were on the near side, the impact occurs a couple of days after New Moon,” he wrote.
Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell wrote that the impact is due on March 4, but is “not a big deal.”
Nevertheless, space enthusiasts believe the impact could provide valuable data.
Berger believes that the event would allow for observation of subsurface material ejected by the rocket’s strike, while Gray said that he is “rooting for a lunar impact.”
“We already know what happens when junk hits the Earth; there’s not much to learn from that,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS