A runaway SpaceX rocket will collide with the Moon seven years after being launched

He had been tumbling through space for seven years, but their journey will be over soon: the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket that launched in February 2015 will end up colliding with the Moon in a matter of weeks.

That second stage, weighs about four tons, follows a path that will intersect with the Moon on March 4 according to expert calculations. The impact, yes, does not pose any danger to our satellite or our planet.

of armageddon, nothing

In February 2015, SpaceX launched a Falcon9 rocket that had two missions. The first, send the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) weather satellite into space. The second, to recover the first stage and make the era of reusable rockets could begin.

It would take a little longer to achieve that second goal. Something unexpected happened during that launch: the second stage of the rocket ended up losing its course. It didn’t have enough fuel to get back to Earth, but it was also unable to escape the gravity of the Earth-Moon system, explained Meteorologist Eric Berger.

What happened then? That this stage, already converted into a gigantic piece of space junk, began to wander through space with erratic orbits that have been perpetuated for the last seven years.

That trip will end next March. It is estimated that on March 4 it will collide with the Moon at a speed of 2.58 km/s.. This is what Bill Gray believes, who develops software to track stellar bodies such as asteroids, planets or comets.

That second stage already flew over the Moon on January 5, Gray said, but on March 4 “it will certainly impact” our satellite. Your Estimates, in which a large community of amateur observers has collaborated, include the point at which the rocket is expected to hit.

It will probably do so in an area of ​​the Moon that will probably make it impossible for us to observe the impact, but what is clear is that that collision will have no collateral effect.

There is no danger to the Moon and much less to the Earth, but observers at least hope that this impact will allow them to observe what about the underlying material of the surface when it is ejected after the collision.

Via | Gizmodo