According to foreign media reports such as The Guardian and the Russian Satellite News Agency, some experts said that a rocket launched by Musk before is about to hit the moon, and the impact time is expected to be March 4 this year.
It is reported that the rocket was launched by space exploration technology company SpaceX 7 years ago, and it is a Falcon 9 rocket.
In February 2015, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was successfully launched in Florida, USA. It is understood that under normal circumstances, rockets will burn out of fuel when they return to Earth, and then be recovered on Earth. However, due to altitude limitations, the Falcon 9 rocket did not have enough fuel to return to the Earth's atmosphere and was trapped in space, thus beginning a disorderly "space drifting life".
Infographic (Source: The Guardian)
Astronomer Gray said the "space junk," which weighs 4 tons, flew over the moon at close range on Jan. 5 and will collide with the moon at a speed of 2.58 kilometers per second on March 4.
"This is the first incident I know of in which space junk accidentally hit the moon." Gray added.
On Jan. 26, Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, confirmed the news in a social media post.
"For those questions, I would say, yes, that vintage Falcon 9 rocket launched in 2015 will hit the moon on March 4. But the problem shouldn't be that tricky. McDowell's tweet reads.
Screenshot of McDowell's related tweet (Source: Twitter)
Musk has been criticized by netizens for this, and this is not the first time he has been accused of this kind. In the early days, his "Starlink" program was highly inefficient, and also left a lot of "space debris", which was criticized by some astronomers.