Elon Musk's space junk is going to hit the far side of the moon
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket before launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in 2015.Part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will be crashing into the moon in March—an unintended lunar collision that is likely the first of its kind.
The piece is a booster from a Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX launched in February 2015 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The rocket carried NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite on what was supposed to be SpaceX’s first deep space mission. While DSCOVR made it to its target—a point thousands of miles from Earth that provides a stable orbit for the observatory—Falcon 9 faltered at its second stage.
After releasing its satellite, Falcon 9 was originally supposed to return to Earth. But the rocket had gone too high and lacked the energy to escape Earth’s atmosphere. It is now space junk, and has been circling Earth in a chaotic orbit since then. Now, the rocket is on route for “certain impact” with the moon on March 4, writes Bill Gray, the creator of the Project Pluto software, which is used by both professional and amateur astronomers worldwide to track near-Earth objects, asteroids, minor planets, and comets.
. Based on his analyses, he believes the rocket, traveling at about 5,770 miles per hour, will slam into the far side of the moon near its equator.While this may sound frightening, astronomers assure that this is nothing to worry about. Asteroids and comets have pummeled the moon for as long as there has been a moon, which is the reason for its cratered surface.
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