(ORDO NEWS) — 3 tons of space debris will soon crash into the Moon, leaving a crater on the surface, where several long trucks with a semi-trailer can fit.
The remnants of the rocket will hit the surface on the far side of the moon, moving at a speed of 9300 kilometers per hour, on Friday, and we, alas, will not be able to see this event from the Earth‘s surface with telescopes.
This metal fragment has been tumbling erratically in space, experts say, since it was launched by China about 10 years ago. But Chinese officials doubt that the Celestial Empire was involved in “scattering garbage” in space.
Without questioning who this fragment is, scientists believe that the fragment is capable of forming a crater on the surface of the Moon ranging in size from 10 to 20 meters, as a result of which a cloud of dust hundreds of kilometers in size will rise from the surface of the Moon.
Space debris circling our planet in low orbits is relatively easy to track. Objects launched deeper into space are less dangerous in terms of their possible collision with newly launched vehicles, so such fragments remain unobserved, and only sometimes amateur astronomers “play detectives”, establishing the trajectories of known fragments or finding out the origin of unidentified fragments space debris.
Initially, amateur astronomer Bill Gray, who discovered last January that a large piece of space debris was approaching the Moon, accused SpaceX of “scattering debris” in space, but later, under the influence of objections from NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, changed his mind, suggesting instead that the fragment is the third stage of a Chinese rocket launched in 2014. Now Gray, a physicist and mathematician, says he is confident in his new version of the origin of this piece of space debris.
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