Nasa Has Located A Double Crater On The Moon Caused By A Mysterious Rocket Crash

Image: NASA / Goddard / Arizona State University Astronomers have finally located the point of impact of a mysterious rocket that curiously created two craters on the dark side of the Moon. The rocket hit the Moon on March 4, but astronomers reported the discovery of the crash site just last week. There is now an eastern crater on the Moon with a diameter of about 18 meters (19.5 yards) that is superimposed on a western crater 16 meters (17.5 yards) in diameter. According to NASA, the double crater may indicate that the rocket’s body had large masses at each end. So far, no other crash on the Moon has created double craters, although the Apollo SIV-B craters were larger. SEE: NASA’s Mars Helicopter has a problem. This clever software trick could fix it Neither NASA nor other astronomers have been able to confirm which country or company the rocket belonged to. “Usually a rocket used has mass concentrated at the end of the engine; the rest of the rocket stage consists primarily of an empty fuel tank,” said Mark Robinson, a professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at NASA, Arizona State University. . Press release. “As the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the dual nature of the crater may indicate its identity.” Robinson is also the lead researcher on NASA’s lunar reconnaissance camera and a new NASA lunar imaging experiment called ShadowCam. According to the New York Times, in January there was speculation that the rocket section was the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched in 2015 on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the DSCOVR Deep Space Climate Observatory project. But this was later ruled out.
Bill Gray, the maker of the astronomical software Project Pluto, first spotted the rocket in January and tracked it as it approached the Moon. SEE: NASA delays sending Psyche asteroids He had assumed in January, as reported by Ars Technica, that it was the Falcon 9 division, but a NASA engineer said the launch trajectory did not match the rocket’s trajectory. Gray later concluded that the possible candidate was a Long March 3C rocket launched from China in 2014. However, China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on February 21 that “the upper stage of the Chang’e-5 missile-related missile entered the Earth’s atmosphere and burned completely.” Gray disagrees with China’s assessment and believes that “two different, but similarly named, lunar missions were involved.”
He also argues that some official agency, such as the US Space Force, or possibly an international agency, should monitor space debris over long distances, not just objects such as lower-orbiting asteroids.
“Many more spacecraft are now going into high orbit, and some of them will be carrying crews to the moon. Such garbage will no longer be just a nuisance to a small group of astronomers,” Gray wrote on the Project Pluto blog.