AN OUT-of-control rocket on course to crash into the Moon threatens to contaminate its surface with microbes from Earth, a scientist has warned.
The derelict upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 was launched in 2015 and is expected to hit our rocky neighbour on March 4 at 2.6 kilometres per second.
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While the crater and debris created by the collision are of little concern, the impact could plonk microorganisms still clinging to the spinning hunk of metal onto the Moon.
“I’m not bothered by one more crater being made on the Moon,” Dr Rothery, a professor of planetary geosciences at The Open University, wrote in The Conversation last week.
It already has something like half a billion craters that are ten metres or more in diameter.
“What we should worry about is contaminating the Moon with living microbes, or molecules that could in the future be mistaken as evidence of former life on the Moon.”
According to the astronomer, the four-tonne hunk of metal will leave behind a crater roughly 19 metres (62 ft) wide upon impact on March 4.
The Moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, meaning any projectiles heading in its direction are afforded a clear path to the surface.
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Over the past decade, hundreds of smaller impacts left by chunks of space rocks have been picked up by Nasa’s lunar impact monitoring project.
Any concern over the crater left behind by the SpaceX rocket part is “misplaced”, Dr Rothery said – it’s contamination that we should be worrying about.
Most nations have signed up to planetary protection protocols that seek to minimise the risk
“Most nations have signed up to planetary protection protocols that seek to minimise the risk of biological contamination from Earth to another body (and also from another body back to Earth),” he wrote.
“The protocols are in place for reasons both ethical and scientific. The ethical argument is that it would not be right to put at risk any ecosystem that may exist on another body by introducing organisms from Earth that might thrive there.
“The scientific argument is that we want to study and understand the natural conditions on each other body, so we should not risk compromising or destroying them by wanton contamination.”
The out-of-control booster was launched from Florida in February 2015 as part of SpaceX’s first deep-space mission.
Its second stage completed a long burn of its engines before deploying the NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) on a journey to a point more than 1 million km 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.
It did not have enough fuel left to take it back into Earth’s atmosphere, leaving it on a chaotic orbit around our planet.
Its impact with the Moon is estimated to occur on March 4, 2022, 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 hitting the Moon.
Dr Rothery highlighted that the DSCOVR Falcon 9 was not sterile upon launch, though it did not carry any biological cargo and spent seven years in space.
As a result, the likelihood of any contamination of the Moon is slim. It’s imperative that space agencies and rocket companies stick to the planetary protection protocols in future, he added.
“The more things we send to the Moon, the more careful we must be and the harder it will be to enforce any rules,” he wrote.
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
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Personalised smart guns, which can be fired only by verified users, may finally become available to U.S. consumers this year.
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