Nearly seven years ago, a SpaceX rocket was launched as part of a mission to send a climate observation satellite 930,00 miles from Earth.
The rocket has run out of fuel and has been hurtling out of control in a chaotic orbit. Astronomers predict it’s on a collision course with the moon within weeks.
According to a report by Live Science, the now-defunct 4.4-ton Falcon 9 booster was launched from Florida in February 2015.
Bill Gray, a developer of software that tracks near-Earth objects, has been observing the out-of-control piece.
Gray noted in a Jan. 21 blog post, the space junk had “made a close lunar flyby on January 5″ but is set for “a certain impact at March 4,” hitting the far side of the moon while traveling at a speed of 5,771 mph.
“This is the first unintentional case [of rocket debris hitting the moon] of which I am aware,” Gray wrote.
Gray noted in the blog it wasn’t possible to predict the exact time and location of the collision, “due to the unpredictable effect of sunlight ‘pushing’ on the rocket and ‘ambiguity in measuring rotation periods’ which may slightly alter its orbit,” The Guardian cited.
Gray further indicated that while these unpredictable effects are very small, “they will accumulate between now and March 4,” and that to pinpoint the precise time and location of the impact, further observations were needed.
The Guardian cited Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, who wrote in a Twitter post that the impact was due on March 4 but was “not a big deal.”
However, Meteorologist Eric Berger wrote in a post for Ars Technica the significance of the crash. It will allow satellites currently orbiting the moon — NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft — to collect observations about the impact crater.
Berger noted while scientists are most interested in understanding “the presence of ice at the lunar poles,” the ability to observe “subsurface material ejected by the Falcon 9 rocket’s strike” could still reveal some valuable data.
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