The Moon has a new double crater after a rocket body collided with its surface on March 4.
New images shared by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the satellite since 2009, have revealed the location of the unusual crater.
The impact created two overlapping craters, an eastern crater measuring 18 meters in diameter and a western crater measuring 16 meters. Together they create a depression approximately 28 meters wide in the longest dimension.
Although astronomers expected the impact after discovering that the rocket part was on its way to collide with the Moon, the double crater created came as a surprise.
Typically, spent rockets have more mass at the engine end because the rest of the ship is largely just an empty fuel tank. But the double crater suggests that this object had large masses at both ends when it hit the Moon.
The exact origin of the rocket’s body, a piece of space junk that had been spinning for years, is unclear, so the double crater could help astronomers determine what it was.
The Moon does not have a protective atmosphere, so it is littered with craters created when objects such as asteroids regularly crash into the surface.
This was the first time a piece of space junk had accidentally hit the lunar surface that experts are aware of. But the craters resulted from the deliberate collision of spacecraft on the moon.
For example, four large lunar craters attributed to the Apollo 13, 14, 15 and 17 missions are much larger than each of the overlapping craters created during the March 4 impact. However, the maximum width of the new double crater is similar to Apollo craters..
origin uncertain
Bill Gray, an independent researcher focused on orbital dynamics and astronomical software developer, was the first to identify the rocket’s trajectory.
Gray initially identified it as the stage of the SpaceX Falcon rocket that launched the U.S. Deep Space Weather Observatory, or DSCOVR, in 2015, but later said he was wrong and was likely from a 2014 Chinese lunar mission — an assessment that NASA agreed.
However, China’s Foreign Ministry denied the rocket was from its Chang’e-5 lunar mission, saying the probe in question burned up on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
No agency systematically tracks space debris this far from Earth, and confusion over the rocket stage’s origin has underscored the need for official agencies to monitor deep space debris more closely, rather than relying on the limited resources of individuals and academics.
However, experts say the biggest challenge is space debris in low Earth orbit, an area where it can collide with working satellites, create more junk and threaten human life on manned spacecraft.
There are at least 26,000 pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth that are the size of a softball or larger and could destroy a satellite on impact; more than 500,000 marble-sized objects — large enough to damage spacecraft or satellites; and more than 100 million pieces the size of a grain of salt, tiny debris that can puncture a spacesuit, according to a NASA report released last year.
Source: CNN Brasil
