Three tons of space junk, the remains of a rocket, are about to crash into the Moon to form a huge crater and send a huge amount of dust through the barren surface of our satellite. Experts believe that the debris will crash on the far side of the Moon (the hidden side), away from the prying eyes of telescopes next Friday, March 4 at 9,300 km / h.
There is a lot of garbage up there
We have sent in the past, more than 12,000 satellites to orbit the Earth since 1957; 5,100 of them are still operational ; We’ve also intentionally impacted objects on the Moon, starting in the 1950s, but this is the first time that a human-made object has landed, unscheduled, on the Moon.
The space around the Moon doesn’t have as much space junk as Earth, but it’s going to stay that way for a long time. This new impact, that of part of China’s Chang’e 5-T1 rocket, will likely hit near the Moon’s equator on the far side.
“This next impact is a bit beyond our usual area of interest because we are primarily focused on the debris population in heavily trafficked low-Earth orbits, up to 2,000 km altitude,” explained Tim. Flohrer of the ESA Space Debris Office. “However, our colleagues at ESA’s Planetary Defense Office are going further into space. They use telescopes around the world to track near-Earth asteroids and sometimes look at human-made objects as well. There has been discussion of extending our own mandate to the ‘cislunar’ space between the Earth and the Moon, due to the increasing use of scientifically vital Sun-Earth Lagrange points in the years to come.”
The Moon already has countless craters, for with little or no real atmosphere, our satellite is defenseless against the constant barrage of meteorites and asteroids. Without weather, there is no erosion, so impact craters last forever.
According to experts, due to its location, it could take weeks, even months, to confirm the Chinese rocket’s impact on the Moon through satellite images .
