The collision is expected at 2:45 p.m. on Friday. “We are very far from a disaster scenario,” explains Christophe Bonnal, from the National Center for Space Studies (Cnes).
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An unidentified flying object is about to crash into the Moon. This is not science fiction, this machine, which could be a rocket stage, must crash into our satellite on Friday March 4 at 2:25 p.m. precisely, Paris time. But impossible to determine the nature of this debris. Several hypotheses have been put forward. Is it a rocket from Space X, as claimed by an American astronomer? This track is now ruled out, like that of a Chinese rocket lost in space.
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“Let’s be very frank, we don’t even know if it’s a piece of rocket, launches Christophe Bonnal, expert at the National Center for Space Studies (Cnes). It is an object which is 2.50 meters and which is 360,000 kilometers away, it is already good that we manage to follow it. This debris wanders in space and astronomers therefore have a hard time identifying its origin. “The only way to detect who it may be is to go back in time to the day of the launch. There, it could be ten years later…”
The Moon is used to impacts, especially those of meteorites. For spacecraft it is much rarer. And this time will be the first time that an earth-origin debris accidentally hits the satellite. But the consequences are limited. “The surface of the Moon is the equivalent of Africa. So we have to imagine that we have the equivalent of a car that is going to crash in Africa. We are very far from a scenario disaster. Obviously, there is no atmosphere, there is no possible contamination. And at the level of the regulations, there is nothing to complain about, even if it is a pity not to control correctly its purpose.”
This will be the first time that a piece of debris accidentally hits the Moon: it will have one more crater after the impact in March of an upper stage of #Falcon9 @SpaceX.
That of@esa_webb performed a specific maneuver to avoid this scenario https://t.co/c5JdYC6Icw pic.twitter.com/xFMjZMwGPW
— ESA France (@ESA_fr) February 3, 2022
This collision at 9,300 km/h could still have been of scientific interest. But astronomers will not be able to analyze the crater since this debris should crash into the far side of our satellite.