Runaway rocket part crashes into the moon | Science

The rocket part weighed about four tons and crashed into the moon at around 9,000 kilometers per hour. The rocket created a small crater and a plume of dust. Scientists hope to get confirmation in the coming days or weeks.

Bill Gray of Project Pluto software reported that it was a SpaceX rocket stage launched in 2015 but later retracted. It’s probably a Chinese missile, he says now. China’s foreign minister denied this in February this year. He said their rocket had re-entered the atmosphere and completely burned out.

The rocket component was first sighted from Earth in March 2015. A NASA-funded space survey in Arizona spotted it, but quickly lost interest when it turned out it wasn’t. it wasn’t an asteroid. The rocket part is what is called “space junk”, which is thrown away by missions or satellites without enough fuel or energy to return to Earth. Some pieces are closer to us, just above Earth, but others, like this one, are thousands of miles in high orbit, far from Earth’s atmosphere.

This is the first time that space debris has accidentally hit the Moon. The European Space Agency estimates that there are currently around 36,500 pieces of space debris larger than 10 centimeters flying through space. Space surveillance is expensive and the risks to humans from debris in high orbit are low. Only a handful of volunteer astronomers spend their free time doing calculations. They send emails and alerts back and forth asking where is the best place on Earth to spot an object in space.

Watch our most viewed news videos in the playlist below: