SpaceX rocket booster to crash into moon in March, scientist says

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SpaceX rocket booster to crash into moon in March, scientist says

#1 Post by PHXPhlyer » Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:45 pm

SpaceX rocket booster to crash into moon in March, scientist says

https://www.abc15.com/news/national/spa ... ntist-says

Experts say a spent SpaceX booster rocket that has been orbiting the Earth for several years will crash into the moon in the weeks ahead.

According to Ars Technica, the booster lifted off with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in February 2015. After the spent engine separated from the module, it didn't have enough fuel to return to the Earth's atmosphere, but it also was not far away enough from the Earth's surface to travel into deep space.

As a result, the booster engine has been orbiting the Earth in a "chaotic" pattern ever since, like thousands of other pieces of space debris. But according to scientist Bill Gray, the booster will soon make a crash landing — not on the Earth, but on the moon.

Gray, who writes software to track near-Earth objects, wrote on his website Friday that he expects the booster to crash into the moon in early March.

In his post, Gray said he said he expected the booster to make an impact with the dark side of the moon on March 4 — though due to the unpredictability of the travel of space junk, he noted there is some room for error in the location and timing. He added that this would be the first recorded time he was aware of when a piece of space junk has made an unintentional impact with the moon.

He also noted that despite there being thousands of pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth, there is very little cause for concern that such an object could make an impact on our planet.

"Obviously, junk of this sort hasn't been a big deal," he wrote.

Insider noted that other scientists aren't worried about the potential impact. On Tuesday, Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell tweeted that the crash would result in "just another hole in the green cheese."

Cue up Pink Floyd. =))

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Re: SpaceX rocket booster to crash into moon in March, scientist says

#2 Post by Woody » Thu Jan 27, 2022 9:30 am

Here it is :-bd

The first album that I ever bought and I was at this gig :D

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Re: SpaceX rocket booster to crash into moon in March, scientist says

#3 Post by PHXPhlyer » Tue Feb 15, 2022 1:56 am

Origin of rocket on course to slam into moon wrongly identified #-o

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/world/mo ... index.html

(CNN)A rogue rocket expected to collide with the moon on March 4 was wrongly identified as a SpaceX Falcon rocket stage and, instead, is likely from a past Chinese lunar mission, according to NASA.

The object now on target to hit the moon was first made public by Bill Gray, an independent researcher focused on orbital dynamics and the developer of astronomical software. He identified it in 2015 as the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon rocket, used that same year to launch the US Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR.
The object, initially called WE0913A by asteroid spotters, had gone past the moon two days after DSCOVR's launch, he said.

"I and others came to accept the identification with the second stage as correct. The object had about the brightness we would expect, and had showed up at the expected time and moving in a reasonable orbit," Gray said on his website.
His assessment was widely accepted by other space experts and NASA, which said it was monitoring the rocket's trajectory.
A new identification
Over the weekend, however, Gray said he had gotten the object's origins wrong after communicating with Jon Giorgini of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which doesn't track space junk but does keep careful track of a lot of active spacecraft, including DSCOVR.
"Jon pointed out that JPL's Horizons system showed that the DSCOVR spacecraft's trajectory did not go particularly close to the moon. It would be a little strange if the second stage went right past the moon, while DSCOVR was in another part of the sky. There's always some separation, but this was suspiciously large," Gray said.
"Analysis led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies indicates the object expected to impact the far side of the Moon March 4 is likely the Chinese Chang'e 5-T1 booster launched in 2014," according to a NASA statement released Monday.
"It is not a SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage from a mission in 2015 as previously reported. This update results from analysis of the object's orbits in the 2016 -- 2017 timeframe."
Gray said he subsequently reviewed his data and has now landed on a different explanation: He said that the object was the third stage of the Chinese Long March 3C rocket used to launch its lunar orbiter in 2014.
The rocket stage is expected to hit the moon at 7:26 a.m. ET on March 4. However, the impact will be on the far side of the moon and not visible from Earth. The rocket will likely disintegrate on impact and create a crater about 10 to 20 meters (32.8 feet to 65.6 feet) across.
Need for official monitoring of space junk
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, said identifying space junk is "never easy" in deep-space orbit, but he said Gray's new identification was likely right. "I'd give at least 80% and maybe 90% odds."

He explained, "It's especially hard for these things in chaotic deep space orbits where you pick something up several years after it was last seen and try and backtrack it to match it with a known mission."
McDowell said the confusion over the identity of the rocket stage highlighted the need for NASA and other official agencies to be monitoring deep space junk more closely, rather than relying on limited resources of private individuals and academics.
There are about 30 to 50 lost deep-space objects like the rocket stage that have been missing for years, but no space agencies have systematically kept track of space debris so far away from Earth, he said.
"It's not like LEO (low Earth orbit) stuff where the traffic is high so junk is a danger to other spacecraft. But you'd think it would be a good idea to know where we have dumped things."
He added, "It's not a very high priority, but you would think the world could afford to hire at least one person to do this properly, and maybe require space agencies to make public their deep space trajectories."
More spacecraft are going into this sort of orbit in the future, Gray said, and some thought should be put into keeping "outer space clean." There are simple steps that government agencies and corporations launching rockets could take such as making the last known orbital data elements publicly available.

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Re: SpaceX rocket booster to crash into moon in March, scientist says

#4 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Tue Feb 15, 2022 6:28 am

Is is only a matter of time before some junk, most likely in LEO, causes a major disaster in space. Further afield it seems a pity to be turning the moon into a junkyard.
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Re: SpaceX rocket booster to crash into moon in March, scientist says

#5 Post by PHXPhlyer » Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:38 am

New double crater seen on the moon after mystery rocket impact

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/27/world/ro ... index.html

The moon has a new double crater after a rocket body collided with its surface on March 4.

New images shared by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the moon since 2009, have revealed the location of the unusual crater.

The impact created two craters that overlap, an eastern crater measuring 59 feet (18 meters) across and a western crater spanning 52.5 feet (16 meters). Together, they create a depression that is roughly 91.8 feet (28 meters) wide in the longest dimension.

Although astronomers expected the impact after discovering that the rocket part was on track to collide with the moon, the double crater it created was a surprise.

Typically, spent rockets have the most mass at the motor end because the rest of the rocket is largely just an empty fuel tank. But the double crater suggests that this object had large masses at both ends when it hit the moon.

The exact origin of the rocket body, a piece of space junk that had been careening around for years, is unclear, so the double crater could help astronomers determine what it was.

The moon lacks a protective atmosphere, so it’s littered with craters created when objects like asteroids regularly slam into the surface.

This was the first time a piece of space junk unintentionally hit the lunar surface that experts know of. But craters have resulted from spacecraft being deliberately crashed into the moon.

For example, four large moon craters attributed to the Apollo 13, 14, 15 and 17 missions are all much larger than each of the overlapping craters created during the March 4 impact. However, the maximum width of the new double crater is similar to the Apollo craters.

Unclear origin
Bill Gray, an independent researcher focused on orbital dynamics and the developer of astronomical software, was first to spot the trajectory of the rocket booster.

Gray had initially identified it as the SpaceX Falcon rocket stage that launched the US Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, in 2015 but later said he’d gotten that wrong and it was likely from a 2014 Chinese lunar mission – an assessment NASA agreed with.

However, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied the booster was from its Chang’e-5 moon mission, saying that the rocket in question burned up on reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.

he International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a fly around of the orbiting lab that took place following its undocking from the Harmony module's space-facing port on Nov. 8, 2021. The orbital complex was flying 263 miles above the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean when this photograph was taken.
This is the space graveyard where the International Space Station will be buried
No agencies systematically track space debris so far away from Earth, and the confusion over the origin of the rocket stage has underscored the need for official agencies to monitor deep-space junk more closely, rather than relying on the limited resources of private individuals and academics.

However, experts say that the bigger challenge is the space debris in low-Earth orbit, an area where it can collide with functioning satellites, create more junk and threaten human life on crewed spacecraft.

There are at least 26,000 pieces of space junk orbiting Earth that are the size of a softball or larger and could destroy a satellite on impact; over 500,000 objects the size of a marble – big enough to cause damage to spacecraft or satellites; and over 100 million pieces the size of a grain of salt, tiny debris that could nonetheless puncture a spacesuit, according to a NASA report issued last year.

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