A piece of an old rocket will fall on the dark side of the moon today at noon

Today at 14:25 Greek time, the stray part of an older rocket of unknown origin is expected to crash on the “dark” (invisible from Earth) side of the Moon, near the Hertzprung crater at the equator.

The impact will not be visible to terrestrial telescopes. It is the first time that a human space “garbage” will fall on another celestial body.

The three-tonne massive space junk, traveling at nearly 9,300 kilometers per hour, was initially thought to be part of a US Space X Falcon 9 rocket (launched in 2015) and later a Chinese rocket (Chang’e 5). -T1 that was launched in 2014) – something that China continues to categorically deny.

Astronomers expect the impact to create a crater 10 to 20 meters in diameter. The US space agency (NASA) LRO satellite will probably see the point of impact, but probably after a few weeks.

It was preceded in 2009 by the NASA-controlled lunar eclipse of the LCROSS lunar satellite, as well as the deliberate impacts on the Moon of parts of the large “Saturn 5” rockets used in the “Apollo” missions of the 1970s and 1970s. The first spacecraft that had landed on the Moon, was the Soviet “Luna 2” in 1959, while the most recent examples are in 2019 the Israeli ship Beresheet and in 2020 the Chinese Chang’e 5.

More than 12,000 satellites have been orbited the Earth since the space age began in 1957, and about 5,100 of them are still operating. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates that at least 36,500 space “garbage” over 10 cm are currently circulating in space around our planet, which poses a risk to space missions. This “garbage” includes dead satellites and various parts of rockets.

“According to” Nature “, more than 150 objects are orbiting the Moon, of which at least 90% are” garbage “.

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