Space junk collides with the far side of the moon and causes a huge crater

In an unprecedented display of cosmic junk, a deformed rocket object will smash into the far side of the moon on Friday, the first time a spacecraft has accidentally hit the lunar surface.

dilapidated missile booster, Believed to be part of China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission Orbiting the moon in 2014, it is expected to reach Hertzsprung crater at 12:25 GMT, although the time and location are unclear.

Traveling at speeds in excess of 5,500 miles per hour (2.5 kilometers per second), the 4-ton rocket body will plow the surface at a shallow angle, scattering debris and ripping through a crater designed to reach 20 to 30 meters (20 to 30 metres) meters ). 65 feet). ) to 100 displayed).

It highlights how space junk is now spreading beyond Earth, where the United States is already tracking more than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris, said Vishnu Reddy, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona whose team helped identify the object.

“Things have hit the moon in the past, but they were basically intentional collisions, or we tried to land and crashed on the surface,” Reddy said. “This is an unintended missile effect.”

Astronomers won’t be able to directly observe the impact, but scientists hope that images of the crash site can be captured soon after by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, both orbiting the moon. Chinese Lander Chang’e 4, which Landed on the other side of the moon In 2019, there is still a long way to go to see the spectacle.

The natural meteor impact caused the moon to puncture half a billion craters the same size or larger than the thruster could. But the lunar surface also bears the scars of intentionally shattered rocket stages, lunar missions that compress dust rather than settle on it.

During the Apollo era, massive objects from the Saturn 5 rocket were oriented toward the surface so that instruments placed on the surface could monitor the resulting shock waves to analyze the interior of the Moon.

Since then, more and more alien materials have joined the garbage left by American astronauts. In 1999, a special mission was sent to the moon The ashes of astronomer Eugene Shoemaker To the “crater of eternal darkness” near the south pole of the moon. Three years ago, the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet crashed onto the surface, scattering thousands of small rockets. tardigrades. even though I hope he survivesMany scholars believe that they were Turned into porridge.

Reddy’s group has cataloged nearly 200 objects floating aimlessly in the “lunar space” between Earth and the Moon. It was originally thought to be part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Released in 2015, but Reddy and his students mentioned Its optical spectra – the wavelengths of light it reflects – are closer to those of the Chinese Long March 3C rocket that launched the Chang’e 5-T1 mission a year ago.

Reddy believes that the unintended impact on the Moon should draw attention to the growing issue of space debris. “People realize it’s pretty bad in Earth orbit, but now we’re slowly putting debris into lunar space,” he said. “We’ve already missed it around the Earth, and we’re not going to do it around the Moon.”

However, there is more at stake than cosmic junk. According to Reddy, there are national security implications due to the difficulty of locating and tracking objects away from the ground. “What can our adversaries put into lunar space that we don’t know about?” He said. “You can track something 4 inches into Earth’s orbit, but do you track something small in lunar space? Forget.”

Chris Newman, professor of space law and policy at Northumbria University, called the impending impact a “warning science” given plans to return humans to the moon. “Obviously, when we start putting people on the moon permanently, that’s something we have to think about,” he said.

David Rothrey, professor of Earth sciences at the Open University, emphasized that anyone concerned about a rocket hitting the Moon should be more concerned about biological contamination, despite it being a small risk. “Perhaps some of the microbes you carry accidentally survive, or you survive trauma,” he said. “Another crater on the moon you don’t have to worry about.”