A rocket wreckage is about to hit the moon, and at first, astronomer Bill Gray thought it was SpaceX's old Falcon 9 rocket, but now it is said that it is not the Falcon 9 rocket, but the Chinese Long March rocket, why did he suddenly change his mouth?
On January 25, 2022, the American astronomer Bill Gray sent a shocking message from space, a rocket wreckage that has been wandering in space for 7 years is about to end its wandering career, is accelerating to the moon, is expected to hit the far side of the moon around March 4, the explosion is inevitable, will create a crater about 19 meters in diameter.
According to Bill Gray's message, the rocket weighed 4 tons and hit the far side of the moon at a speed of 2.58 kilometers per second, the impact site was near the Hertzsprung crater, and the precise coordinate position predicted by the supercomputer was at latitude: 5.18° north, longitude: 233.55°E, that is, the upper right corner of the map on the far side of the moon.
Bill Gray initially believed that the rocket wreckage was the second order of SpaceX's old Falcon 9 rocket, recognized as 2015-007B.
It's no wonder that, seven years ago, a SpaceX rocket that was being upgraded received a special order to launch the U.S. Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Deep Space Climate Observation Satellite (DSCOVR).
DSCOVR is not an ordinary Earth satellite, but to fly to the L1 Lagrangian point about 1.5 million kilometers away from the Earth, monitor solar storms, improve our ability to monitor sunspot activity, to know that solar storms will cause geomagnetic storms, recently, 40 SpaceX star chain satellites were destroyed by geomagnetic storms.
This broke Musk's promise to go all out, and it was true that the Deep Space Climate Observation Satellite (DSCOVR) was successfully launched, and 110 days later, DSCOVR successfully reached the L1 Lagrange point.
But in order to send the satellite into the sun's orbit, the old Falcon 9 rocket took a long time to advance, and the second-order wreckage of the Falcon 9 rocket was also thrown into far outer space. As a result, the second-order wreckage of the Falcon 9 rocket wandered in a very chaotic Earth orbit.
Bill Gray believes that the rocket wreckage that has been wandering in Earth orbit for 7 years will eventually be captured by the moon's gravitational pull, orbiting in the lunar orbit, and over time, the lower the orbital height of the rocket wreckage, sooner or later it will hit the moon.
But now, Bill Gray has changed his tune, saying he made the mistake of saying that the rocket wreckage was not an old SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, but a Chinese rocket.
On Feb. 12, Bill Gray posted a correction on his website saying that as early as March 2015, he had misidentified the rocket wreckage as 2015-007B, the second stage of the old Falcon 9 rocket, but in fact there was ample evidence that it was 2014-065B (Chinese rocket wreckage).
Why did Bill Gray suddenly change his mind again? That's because after Bill Gray released the shocking space news in January, people around the world knew about it, including experts from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which specializes in tracking asteroids, as well as spacecraft, including rocket wreckage.
On the morning of February 12, Jet Propulsion Laboratory expert Jon specifically sent an email to Bill Gray, saying that the trajectory and time data of the rocket wreckage did not match the 2015-007B, but was very consistent with the 2014-065B (Chinese rocket), so it was determined to be a Long March rocket.
2014-065B is part of the Long March 3 C rocket, launched at 18:00 on October 23, 2014, when the Chang'e 5-T1 mission was launched, please see clearly, not the Chang'e 5 mission, because the Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission was launched on November 24, 2020, and on December 17, 2020, the Chang'e 5 returner returned to Earth with lunar samples.
The Chang'e 5-T1 mission is actually a tester before the Implementation of the Chang'e-5 mission, launched on October 24, 2014, entered the lunar-terrestrial transfer orbit on October 28, and entered the first lunar orbit correction on October 30, 2014, and at 6:42 on November 1, 2014, the Chang'e 5-T1 return module successfully landed in the predetermined area of the Siziwangqi in Inner Mongolia.
This means that the sample return project of the third phase of the mainland lunar exploration project has been a complete success, and then it is time to launch a normal lunar sample return mission, that is, the Chang'e-5 mission.
But after October 24, 2014, the booster of the Long March 3 C rocket disappeared, and astronomers found a rocket wreckage running in a chaotic orbit before March 2015, indicating that it was not the Falcon 9 2014-065B rocket, but the Chinese Long March rocket 2015-007B. Interesting and informative scientific content, please pay attention to the only WeChat public account: Interesting Exploration