Expect 3 tonnes of junk from outer space to land on Friday on the moon. According to CBS News.
Initially, SpaceX took responsibility for the leftover junk when Bill Gray, an asteroid tracker, shared details of the collision’s course in the beginning of 2022.
Gray believed that it was a SpaceX Falcon Rocket upper stage from the 2015 launch a deep-space climate observatory for NASA. However, a month later he said that the “mystery”SpaceX didn’t send object. According to CBS.
Gray now believes that the material was the third stage in a Chinese rocket test sample. However, Chinese experts don’t agree with Gray’s assessment. Chinese officials claim that the upper stage burned up after it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.
Because there were two Chinese operations that were similar, U.S. officials believe there could be confusion between the two, CBS reported.
According to the outlet, the U.S. Space Command — which tracks “lower space junk,” has confirmed that the Chinese upper stage from the 2014 lunar mission never actually deorbited, despite the database records.
Authorities cannot however determine where the junk is coming from.
Experts have confirmed that the material will smash into the far side of the moon at 5,800 mph on Friday.
Experts warned that it could take months to confirm satellite images of the impact. CBS reported that the moon is not able to resist weather erosion or other factors and will become a crater regardless if the space junk was from elsewhere.
“The effect will be the same,” Jonathan McDowellThe Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics stated. “It’ll leave yet another small crater on the moon.”
According to the outlet scientists expect the remains to leave a hole of 33 to 66 feet in size and to impact the moon with dust hundreds of miles away.