A chunk of rocket propellant, weighing three tons, finally hit the moon on Friday (4) around 9:25 a.m. (Brazilian time). The impact marks the first unintended lunar collision involving spacecraft debris. Before that, only investigations of the missions that landed on the land of the moon.
It has been speculated since February that it may be the remains of a SpaceX rocket. Later, experts came to believe that the wreck was part of a Chinese mission, which denies authorship. To date, no one knows who owns the material that struck the moon.
According to experts, the space junk ended up on the far side of the moon (a region of the satellite that we cannot see from Earth due to the synchronous rotation of our planet), making it impossible for ground-based telescopes to observe the impact. It is estimated that the missile hit an area close to the Herzerbung crater, which has a diameter of 570 km.
We should only get details about the impact in the coming weeks. According to Space.com, the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter), a NASA spacecraft orbiting the Moon, may not have been in a position to pick up information about the location.
Another possibility is that the Indian probe Chandrayaan-2, which is also orbiting our satellite, will take pictures of the place so that we know the impact and possibly the origin of this debris.
Who is the owner?
in the first moment, Astronomer Bill Gray thought it was the remnants of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocketlaunched in 2015 to carry US government satellites into space.
A few days later, Gray recalculated and issued an error message on the website of Project Pluto, a project he developed that focuses on space observations of the elements around the Earth. concluded that The space junk belongs to a Chinese rocket launched in 2014 as part of the Chang’e 5-T1 mission.
For its part, the Chinese government denied that the space junk was part of a mission undertaken by the country. A spokesman said the space equipment would have already fallen into Earth’s atmosphere and burned up.
Last Tuesday (1), the US Space Command, which monitors space debris, stated that the debris may be of Chinese origin. According to the organization, the “upper stage” – one of the parts of the space launcher – of the Chinese rocket, launched in 2014, never left orbit. However, it does not definitively state the source of the equipment or the country responsible for the wreck.
*With information from Barbara Manara and space.com
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