BILLIONAIRE SpaceX boss Elon Musk could face legal action over an out-of-control rocket booster on a collision course with the Moon.
The derelict upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 was launched seven years ago and is expected to hit our rocky satellite next month.
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While the crash isn’t expected to achieve much beyond putting a small dent in the lunar surface, it could land Musk in hot water, according to legal experts.
Some have argued that the celestial flytipping could be grounds to sue the 50-year-old and SpaceX – though a lawsuit is unlikely to ever emerge.
“Theoretically, yes,” attorney Steven Kaufman told Forbes when asked about any potential legal action. Practically, probably not.”
News of the impending smash arose last week following lengthy calculations by online space debris trackers.
The out-of-control booster was launched from Florida in February 2015 as part of SpaceX’s first deep-space mission.
The Falcon 9 second stage completed a long burn of its engines before deploying the NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory on a journey to a point more than 1 million km from Earth.
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It did not have enough fuel left to take it back into Earth’s atmosphere, leaving it on a chaotic orbit around our planet.
Space trackers predict that the rocket part’s will intersect with the far side of the Moon on March 4.
Of course, nobody owns the Moon (not yet, anyway), so if the rocket batters the surface, then there’s no cause for legal action.
In the unlikely event, however, that the spinning hunk of metal were to hit China’s lunar rover, then Musk could end up footing the bill.
Two international treaties signed in 1966 and 1972 means that countries are liable if their space activities damage the spacecraft of another country.
In 1978, for instance, a Soviet satellite broke up over Canada and deposited radioactive material into the atmosphere.
The Canadian government received $3million in damages from the Soviet Union.
Attorney Scot Anderson told Forbes that Musk is unlikely to have to pay up if his private rocket firm damages the property of another nation, however.
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What is SpaceX?
Here’s what you need to know…
SpaceX is a cash-flushed rocket company that wants to take man to Mars.
It was set up by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk in 2002 and is based in Hawthorne, California.
SpaceX’s first aim was to build rockets that can autonomously land back on Earth for refurbishment and re-use.
The technology makes launching and operating space flights more efficient, and therefore cheaper.
SpaceX currently uses its reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets to fly cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) for Nasa.
It also carries satellites and other space tech into orbit for various government agencies and multinational companies.
The company took astronauts to the ISS for the first time in 2020 and flew its first all-civilian crew there a year later.
Future missions will fly tourists and astronauts to the Moon and Mars.
Musk has repeatedly said he believes humanity must colonise Mars to save itself from extinction.
He plans to get a SpaceX rocket to the Red Planet by 2027.
“There’s simply not a lot of precedent,” he said.
Given the size of the rocket part – about 14 metres – and the many thousands of kilometres of space it has to land in, any chance of it actually hitting the Yutu-2 rover are in the millions-to-one.
The booster will hit the Moon at 2.6 kilometres per second, according to Bill Gray, who writes the popular Project Pluto software to track near-Earth objects.
It’s thought to be the first unintentional case of space junk impacting our celestial neighbour.
Unfortunately, it won’t be possible to see the impact live as the tumbling rocket part is expected to hit the Moon’s far side – the part that faces away from Earth.
Instead, astronomers will rely on images snapped by satellites including Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to view the aftermath of the crash.
By analysing the resulting crater, scientists hope to observe subsurface material ejected by the crash to shed light on the Moon’s composition.
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Elon Musk SpaceX rocket that will take humans to Mars filmed in testing
In other news, a four-tonne chunk of a SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the Moon, according to online space junk trackers.
Boeing has sunk $450million into a flying taxi startup that hopes to whisk passengers across cities by the end of the decade.
Personalised smart guns, which can be fired only by verified users, may finally become available to U.S. consumers this year.
And, scientists are embarking on a mission to unravel the mystery behind dozens of grisly child mummies buried in an underground tomb in Sicily.
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