AN UNRULY chunk of rocket debris is thought to have crashed into the Moon.
Astronomers suspect that the rocket piece, often attributed to China, hit the lunar surface in the early hours of March 4.
Read our Rocket Moon Crash live blog for the very latest news and updates…
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We won’t know that it hit the Moon for sure until two satellites that orbit the Moon pass over the possible impact site.
These satellites could photograph any crater that resulted from the collision
The rocket was heading for a collision with the dark side of the Moon so “live” coverage of the event wasn’t possible.
However, experts have now created a physics-based simulation video showing how the crash likely happened.
The video was posted to YouTube by AGI, An Ansys Company.
The caption simply explains: “Alternative wide view of the Chang’e booster impact with the Moon on March 4th, 2022.”
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The rocket part was first spotted by Bill Gray, who writes the popular Project Pluto software to track near-Earth objects.
He reported that the junk was a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage launched from Florida by Elon Musk’s team in February 2015.
However, Bill later retracted his claim and said the rocket part most likely belonged to China.
China has since denied the accusation despite the general consensus being that the rocket piece is the third stage booster from a Long March 3C rocket.
This rocket was used to launch China’s Change’e 5-T1 craft in October 24.
The rocket debris is said to have erratically floated between the Earth and the Moon ever since.
AGI’s simulation video shows how the crash was likely powerful enough to produce a Moon crater.
The researchers used software called the Systems Tool Kit (STK) and Orbit Determination Tool Kit (ODTK), which have previously been used by defense agencies to simulate missions.
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In other news, Nasa has revealed some very important dates for Moon missions that should be happening this year.
Pulverizing asteroids could be humanity’s only chance of avoiding a similar doomsday event to the dinosaurs, scientists claim.
And, we looked into what would happen if you died in space.
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