A purported leftover component of a Chinese rocket blasted into the Moon after years of speeding across deep space on March 4, exactly as space monitoring specialists predicted.
If the law of gravity hasn't altered, it should have impacted the Moon at 7:30 a.m. ET that morning. The impact brings the rocket's time in orbit to a close and is expected to generate a new crater on the Moon that might be up to 65 feet big.
On Oct. 23, 2014, China's Chang'e 5-T1 spacecraft was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center by a March 3C rocket. Since then, it has been circling the Earth-Moon system in an irregular manner.
Chinese Rocket Lands on Far Side of the Moon
Experts told LiveScience that this is the first time space trash has impacted the lunar surface by mistake.
However, because the collision occurred on the Moon's far side, astronomers may need months to locate the crater, confirm the impact, and maybe uncover signs that will put the debate over the Moon's origins to rest.
A new physics-based animation created by AGI, a subsidiary of Ansys, depicts exactly what happened when the spacecraft collided with the lunar surface at Hertzsprung, a massive lunar impact crater on the far side of the Moon.
Forbes said there was no "live" coverage since the incident occurred beyond the view of any observatories or orbiting satellites.
However, it's conceivable that the new crater may be photographed by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) or India's Chandrayaan-2, both of which are in orbit around the Moon, to confirm the impact.
The video embedded below this web page, also available on YouTube, depicts the rocket's approach and impact.
The Systems Tool Kit (STK) and Orbit Determination Tool Kit (ODTK) software packages, utilized to create the movie, were used by the space aerospace and military community to model complicated missions.
About This Junk Spacecraft
Space trackers first assumed it was a component of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched a meteorological satellite in 2015.
However, after a thorough examination, many space trackers verified that the rocket was most likely a remnant from China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission launch.
Chang'e 5-T1 was an experimental mission that tested a capsule during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere before the Chang'e-5 mission, which was the first sample return mission in 45 years.
In 2020, it successfully returned important lunar rock samples to Earth, some of which are two billion years old, making them the youngest Moon rock samples known to science.
Another source of consternation was the fact that the Space Force's 18th Space Control Squadron (18SPCS), which monitors space debris around Earth, reported that the Chang'e 5-T1 mission's rocket was on its monitoring website returned to Earth roughly a year after launch and burnt up in our atmosphere.
The 18SPCS later told The Verge in a statement that the flight's Long March 3C did not truly reenter our atmosphere and has stayed in orbit since launch.
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