A cylindrical object hit the natural satellite of the Earth, according to the calculations of an astronomer. It remains to locate the crater.
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The Moon now has one more crater. A rocket stage dormant for years crashed on its far side on Friday March 4. But this event could not be observed directly, say the experts, and we will have to wait a little longer to have the proof in images. The cylindrical object, which darkened at more than 9,000 km/h, should have dug a crater of “10 to 20 meters in diameter”according to astronomer Bill Gray, the first to identify the upcoming collision.
Its trajectory had been calculated using observations made by telescopes on Earth. “We had a lot of data on this object”underlined Bill Gray. “Unless it was pulled out by an evil hand, it hit the Moon this morning.” The identification of the rocket in question has been debated, as no one is officially responsible for listing and tracking space waste in deep space. Bill Gray created software used by NASA-funded observation programs. He monitors space junk so that it is not mistaken for asteroids, and thus unnecessarily studied.
“Let’s be very frank, we don’t even know if it’s a piece of rocket, however estimated on franceinfo 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. The crater can only be observed by NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) probe, or the Indian Chandrayaan-2, both in orbit around this star. At the end of January, the American space agency had already announced its intention to find the future crater, while warning that the operation could take “weeks”. According to Bill Gray, the two probes can observe any lunar region once a month.
It is not unusual for rocket stages to be abandoned in the cosmos after propelling what they were launched to do. But this is the first time that such an unintended collision with the Moon has been identified. On the other hand, rocket stages have already been launched against the Moon for scientific purposes in the past, such as during the Apollo missions. Studying the crater formed and the material stirred could thus advance selenology, the scientific study of the Moon.