Above: In October 2014, the Long March 3C rocket launches the Chang'e-5 lunar probe. The rocket's upper stage, which is now thought to hit an object on the far side of the moon, will hit the far side of the moon in March 2022. Image credit: Xinhua News Agency/SpaceNews.
Rockets hitting the moon will be absent
From the "Don't Believe Everything You Read" division, we and many other media outlets reported at the end of January 2022 that an uncontrollable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket would hit the moon on March 4 this year. This is the first known time that space junk has inadvertently hit the moon. Yes, it's true. The rocket will hit the moon on March 4. But experts now say the target is not the Falcon 9 launched in 2015. Instead, they now think it's a Chinese Long March rocket launched in 2014. So this time, SpaceX founder Elon Musk got out. But how can astronomers be so wrong?
The main reason is that the space is vast. Small objects like rockets are difficult to track. Read more about why the object was misidentified below.
But — perhaps because of Musk's high profile in the media — the original news at the end of January made headlines around the world. For example, EarthSky reported on Jan. 28:
On March 4, 2022, the upper stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will crash on the moon. The debris has been in space since the Launch of the Deep Space Climate Observatory into space in February 2015. On January 5, 2022, Falcon 9 flew over the moon at close range. Data from observers helped scientists pinpoint its orbit and found that it would hit Hertzsprung crater on the far side of the moon.
The debris will hit at a speed of 5,800 miles (9,300 kilometers) per hour. Aside from the possibility of forming a new, small crater on the moon, the impact of this impact will be minimal.
Aside from rockets' identities, much of the information is still relatively correct. The fall will still take place on March 4. It will still form a small crater on top of the existing Hertzplan crater (which may have formed fragments from debris from the process of forming the solar system billions of years ago).
The diameter of the new crater will be about 20 meters (100 feet).
How did the story begin?
About this irregularly operating rocket, it was originally created by the computational science wizard Bill Gray. He is the founder of the astrometric software Guide. Planetary societies say astronomers, both professional and professional, use the software to track near-Earth objects, asteroids, asteroids and comets.
Eric Berger reports on Ars Technica, a well-known American technology blog publisher founded in 1998 and part of the Condé Nast Group:
Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory— Jon Jorkini — realized that the object wasn't actually the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket. In February 2022, he wrote to Gray explaining that the orbit of the DSCOVR spacecraft is not particularly close to the moon, so the probability of a second phase hitting the moon is extremely low. This prompted Gray to re-organize his data in depth, hoping to dig out some valuable information and identify other potential candidates.
He quickly found one: the Chinese Chang'e-5 mission, launched on a Long March 3 C rocket in October 2014. The lunar mission launched a small spacecraft to the moon (used as a prodromal test of the final lunar sample return mission), and the launch time and lunar orbit almost exactly coincided with the orbit of the object that will hit the moon in March.
Gray wrote on his homepage:
In a sense, this is still indirect evidence. But I think it's pretty convincing! So I believe that at 12:25 p.m. on March 4, 2022, the object that is about to hit the moon will actually be the first stage of the Chang'e 5 rocket.
How are objects misidentified?
As Bill Gray explains on his website, objects in low Earth orbit are easily traceable by different countries because there are many scattered debris and debris there that threaten military satellites as well as satellites for scientific applications. There will be less tracking farther away from Earth. Or, as Gray puts it:
In general, space junk that is farther away from Earth is ignored. (Unless, of course, I found it.) ）
Gray's asteroid hunters, who work alongside, said:
My day job is to serve the asteroid-huntering community, and most man-made objects are closer to Earth and move fast enough so there's no risk of confusion between them and asteroids. But there are also objects farther away from Earth that move slowly enough to look like a rock that will be considered a rock, at least briefly. It's been about fifteen to twenty years, and I've made some observations and calculated orbits. Later, when observations find such an object again, they are able to quickly conclude underground that "forget it; it's not a stone; it's just another nasty man-made object" and then go looking for the real stone.
So, not many people will track wreckage farther away from Earth. As one spacecraft engineer, Ed Trollope, tweeted:
Until the launch mission, the wreckage is not always traced, and nothing can be traced continuously. An object is found, its orbit is calculated, and its information code is traced backwards and where it came from. A lot of them are unknown.
Asked if all the objects that were launched should be tracked by the tracker, he said:
How can you "deify" these 'stalkers' so much? We're talking about bits and pieces of debris, not functional satellites. This huge volume of work is done to improve our flow capacity in this region. If you want to learn more, this is a good place to start.
At the end of the day, a rocket is indeed set to hit the moon in March 2022, but it is not a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Experts say the rocket that hits the moon could be China's Long March 3 rocket, which launched the Chang'e-5 mission in October 2014.
Related knowledge
The Chang'e-5 T-1 probe (Chinese), pinyin: Cháng'é Wǔhào Tànlù Xīng (German: Kundschafter-Sonde für Chang'e 5), is a lunar probe that has been tested for 23 years. Since October 2014, the China National Space Administration has launched it. The probe of the lunar probe orbits the moon, and it has since returned to Earth. During the inspection, the crew started with the probe's single-person module and launched it out of the Earth's atmosphere again, rotating around the moon's orbit.
The lunar probe is a project in the World Program of the People's Republic of China and one of the many lunar probes. Chang'e-1 and Chang'e-2, starting with the topography of the lunar surface and the orbit recorded by the spectrometer, began their work. Chang'e-3 and Chang'e-4 landed on the moon and placed a lunar rover on its surface together, and Chang'e-5 took lunar rock for the earth.
BY：Deborah Byrd and Kelly Kizer Whitt
FY：Astronomical volunteer team
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