The SpaceX rocket, which was launched about seven years ago, is expected to hit the moon in early March, astronomers said.
The Falcon 9 rocket was first launched from Florida in February 2015 as part of an interplanetary mission to launch a space meteorological satellite at a distance of 1 million kilometers from Earth.
But after burning its engines for a long time, it sent the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s deep space climate laboratory to what is known as the Lagrangean dots, which is four times more gravitational-neutral than our distance from the moon. The line with the sun was made from a secondary desert missile.
ArsTechnica says the second phase of the “Falcon 9” rocket, owned by SpaceX, owned by American billionaire Elon Musk, burned its engines long before it could be used by the National Maritime and Deep Space Climate Observatory. Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Earth’s atmosphere do not have enough fuel to return them, as well as the gravitational pull of the Earth-Moon system, meteorologist Eric Berger said in a post in Ars. Technica. It left the second stage of the rocket in a chaotic orbit around our planet since February 2015.
Now, according to astronomers, the second phase of the rocket will hit the moon at a speed of 2.58 kilometers per second in a few weeks.
According to Bill Gray, who oversees the programming of Pluto software to monitor objects near the Earth, it is expected to have an impact on March 4, 2022, and is likely to collide with the Moon near the equator. .
In a recent post on the Ars Technica blog, the data analyst said it “flew closer to the moon on January 5” but “will have an impact on March 4”.
Last week, he noted, “This is the first unplanned case of a lunar space debris attack, and I know it.”
However, the exact location of the rocket’s impact is unclear due to the unpredictable effect of sunlight “pushing” the rocket and the “ambiguity in the measurement of rotation times” that could slightly change its orbit.
Gray called on space monitors to help improve his calculations about the exact time and location of the impact.
Unfortunately, the impact cannot be seen alive as the wrecked rocket area is expected to hit the far side of the Moon without facing the Earth. Instead, astronomers would rely on images of satellites, including NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, to see the impact of the crash.
By analyzing the abyss from impact, scientists hope to trace objects beneath the surface emitted by the impact to shed light on the moon’s composition.
It is noteworthy that as part of the LCROSS mission, in 2009 NASA crashed a booster rocket on the moon, hoping to learn something about what the debris left behind.