ASTRONOMERS have snapped images of a schoolbus-sized rocket part that’s on a collision course with the Moon.
Virtual Telescope Project founder Gianluca Masi captured the runaway Falcon 9 upper stage ahead of its dramatic crash on March 4.
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The SpaceX rocket was launched from Florida in February 2015 and part of it has been orbiting the Earth in a chaotic spin ever since.
It was on a mission to deploy the NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) more than one million kilometres from Earth.
“We captured the DSCOVR’s booster while it is waving us for the last time, before it will hit the Moon next month,” Masi said in a statement.
His image of the rocket part was captured using a single 60-second exposure remotely taken using a telescope in Rome.
It’s visible as a bright spec among dozens of “star streaks” caused by the telescope tracking the rocket stage across the sky.
In a GIF of the exposure posted online, the booster can be seen faintly blinking as it spins on its axis roughly once every 10 seconds, Masi said.
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At the imaging time, the DSCOVR booster was about 300,000 km away – closer to Earth than the Moon ahead of its final approach.
Last month, space trackers calculated that the rocket part will intersect with the Moon at 2.58 kilometres per second within weeks.
The impact is estimated to occur on March 4, 2022, according to Bill Gray, who writes the popular Project Pluto software to track near-Earth objects.
“This is the first unintentional case [of space junk hitting the Moon] of which I am aware,” Gray wrote on January 21.
The astronomer has put out a call to space-watchers to make observations of the booster to help refine his calculations.
He’s hoping to nail down the exact time of the crash ahead of schedule.
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.
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.
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 impact to shed light on the Moon’s composition.
As part of its LCROSS mission, in 2009 Nasa deliberately smashed a rocket booster into the Moon in hopes of learning something from the debris it left behind.
“In essence, this is a ‘free’ LCROSS… except we probably won’t see the impact,” Gray wrote.
SpaceX’s 2015 mission, dubbed DSCOVR, was its first to leave Earth’s orbit, meaning the rocket’s second stage couldn’t be directed into the atmosphere.
That tactic is regularly used by the company and Western space agencies to reduce debris by ensuring that it burns up as opposed to remaining in orbit.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
