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 million-mile journey.
But after completing a long burn of its engines and sending the NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory on its way to the 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.
Interestingly, the crash is going to provide scientists with a rare opportunity to observe how craters are formed on the Moon.
Gray tells Ars that if researchers can determine the precise location of the impact, they’ll “be able to see a very fresh impact crater and probably learn something about the geology of that part of the Moon.”
The rocket weighs roughly four metric tons and will be hitting the Moon at a rate of 1.6 miles per second. So it should create a nice-sized crater for observations.
According to the space observers, the rocket piece is about 4 metric tons and is likely to strike the lunar surface at 2.58 km/s velocity. Bill Gray, who tracks near-Earth objects, asteroids, minor planets, and comets revealed in his blog that the booster stage made a close flyby of the Moon on January 5 and is likely to hit the lunar surface on March 4.
“This is the first unintentional case (of space debris striking the moon) of which I am aware”, Gray said in his blog as per The Guardian. The expert said that although there will be little effect of sunlight on the rocket’s path, it might accumulate to make a noticeable change, and thus further monitoring is required.
Besides, India’s Chandrayaan-2 orbiter and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that is currently orbiting the Moon also face a threat as the debris might end up colliding with them.
However, an astrophysicist from Harvard University, Jonathan McDowell, has claimed that the rocket moving towards the Moon is not a big deal. “For those asking: yes, an old Falcon 9 second stage left in high orbit in 2015 is going to hit the moon on March 4. It’s interesting, but not a big deal”, McDowell wrote.
Nevertheless, space enthusiasts believe the impact could provide valuable data.
Berger believes the event will allow for observation of subsurface material ejected by the rocket’s strike, while Gray says he is “rooting for a lunar impact”.
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