Photo: CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP / Getty Images
A rocket launched by Elon Musk’s space exploration company is on its way to crash into the Moon and explode. The Falcon 9 booster was launched in 2015, but after to complete its mission it did not have enough fuel to return to Earth and therefore remained in space.
The astronomer Jonathan McDowell mentioned that will be the first uncontrolled collision of a rocket with the Moon. But the consequences will be minor, he assured.
The rocket was abandoned in high orbit seven years ago after completing a mission to send a space weather satellite in a trip of 1,600,000 kilometers.
For those asking: yes, an old Falcon 9 second stage left in high orbit in 2015 is going to hit the moon on March 4. It’s interesting, but not a big deal.
—Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) January 25, 2022
From 2015, the rocket has been attracted by different gravitational forces of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun, which makes its path somewhat “chaotic”, explained Professor McDowell, from the US Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“ It has been dead, simply following the laws of gravity”, he added.
In this time it joined millions of other pieces of space debris; machinery discarded in space after completing missions without enough power to return to Earth.
“Over the decades there were perhaps 50 large objects that we have totally lost track of. This may have happened many times before, we just didn’t realize it. This would be the first confirmed case,” McDowell said.
The projected demise of Falcon 9 was identified by journalist Eric Berger on the space website Ars Technica and by data analyst Bill Gray on his blog.
The collision is scheduled for March 4, when the rocket explodes on contact.
“It’s basically a four-ton empty metal tank, with a rocket engine in the back. So if you imagine throwing it on a rock at 5,000 miles per hour (8,000 km/h), it will not be a happy thing,” said McDowell.
The collision will leave a small artificial crater on the surface of the Moon.
Gray, which uses software to track nearby space objects to Earth, projects that it made a close flyby on January 5. On March 4 it is likely to hit the other side of the Moon, he added.
History of collision with the Moon
In 2009, McDowell and other astronomers conducted an experiment in which a similarly sized rocket crashed into the Moon.
Sensors gathered evidence of the collision in order to study the crater. That means scientists are unlikely to learn anything new from this accident, McDowell explained.
The scientist added that although there are no consequences now for the waste drifting and occasionally crashing, there could be in the future.
“If we go into a future where there are cities and bases on the Moon, we want to know what’s out there. It’s much easier to organize when there’s slow traffic in the space, rather than waiting until it’s a problem.”
And what happens between now and March 4? The rocket will continue under the laws of gravity, crossing space, before it ends its days crashing into the moon.
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