This very small point is a piece of rocket that will crash into the Moon


The piece of Falcon 9 rocket that should crash on the Moon in early March 2022 has been observed. This tiny dot is the remains of a SpaceX launch vehicle that took off in 2015.

The far side of the Moon should welcome a new artificial object on March 4, 2022. However, it will not be an exploration mission, but space debris which should end its race by crashing into the star. The object is a piece of an old SpaceX rocket, which took off from the earth’s surface in 2015.

Before going to crash on our natural satellite, the launcher could be observed. The following image was obtained by the Virtual Telescope Project (a network of robotic telescopes, which allows observations of the sky to be shared online) on February 6, 2022. The tiny dot in the center of the image is what remains of a Falcon 9 rocket, which was once used to launch a satellite: the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR, “Deep Space Climate Observatory”), providing space weather data for NASA .

The piece of rocket that should soon hit the Moon. // Source: Gianluca Masi / Virtual Telescope (cropped photo)

The piece of rocket appears to “blink”

The piece of rocket was 300,000 kilometers away from us when the image was taken. ” The telescope has tracked the apparent motion of the launcher, so it looks like a sharp dot, with the surrounding stars appearing slightly elongated. East is up, South to the left says the Virtual Telescope Project in the few lines describing the image.

The observation of the object made it possible to determine that it turned quickly on itself (it makes a turn in 10 seconds) and that it presented significant variations in luminosity. We perceive this “flashing” in this gif published on the Twitter account @VirtualTelescope.

How to follow the sighting of this piece of SpaceX rocket live

The moment of the crash on the Moon will not be visible from Earth, since the event will occur on the side of the star which is never turned towards our planet. But, a month before the impact, the piece of rocket is still visible one last time. If you want to follow the observations of the object carried out by the Virtual Telescope Project live, know that a live broadcast is scheduled for February 8 from 7 p.m. You can go to the project site or directly to YouTube.

The crash of the end of Falcon 9 on the Moon, which will occur at the beginning of March, does not represent any danger, neither for the Earth nor for the Moon. It should be kept in mind that our natural satellite is regularly hit by much larger and faster objects – hence, by the way, the many craters present on its surface.





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