A hitherto unknown 3-ton rocket ended its seven-year space odyssey by falling to the surface of the Moon at a speed of 9,000 km / h. The incident took place at 14:25 Greek time yesterday Friday, on the invisible side of the Moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was unable to record the collision, but NASA said it would look for the crash site, a process that could take weeks or even months.
The crater created by the collision is expected to be about 20 meters in diameter and will be located inside the 570-kilometer Hertzsprung crater. This is the first man-made object collision on the Moon.
The origin of the rocket remains a mystery. It was originally located in March 2015, but scientists lost interest when they realized it was space junk and not an asteroid. Monitoring space debris in deep space is costly and the risk to humans on such an orbit is very small. Thus, there is no space program or university that has undertaken this task and it is usually the job of individual astronomers to do so in their spare time.
The rocket was recently rediscovered and initially thought to be part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. NASA denied it and then it was thought that it was the Chinese Long March 3C rocket that launched the Chang’e 5-T1 mission in October 2014. Something that China in turn denied, saying that the rocket had burned during its re-entry into the atmosphere.
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