But not SpaceX: Chinese rocket on a crash course with the moon

The rocket is not supposed to be from the US space company SpaceX, as originally assumed, but from China. Almost three weeks ago, it was said that a Falcon 9 rocket from Tesla co-founder Elon Musk’s space company was on a collision course with the moon.

After its launch in 2015, it “strayed” through space for almost seven years. At the time, the British “Guardian” reported that the rocket had brought a weather satellite into its orbit and was launched in the US state of Florida. It completed its mission, but following that the second stage of the engine failed and the rocket was therefore unable to return to earth. After that, it had been in a “somewhat chaotic” orbit around the Earth since 2015, it said.

Everything different

Now it turned out, however, that the rocket is said to be one from the Chinese space program, more precisely a carrier rocket for the “Long March” type lunar probe “Chang’e 5-T1”, launched in 2014.

picturedesk.com/Action Press / Li Gang

The rocket that is supposed to crash on the moon is said to be a “Long March” type from China

The “surprising message,” according to the Guardian, came from US astronomer Bill Gray, who was the first to predict the collision and admitted “his mistake” regarding the SpaceX launch vehicle a few days ago. Gray is behind software called Project Pluto, which is used in tracking near-Earth objects, asteroids and comets.

Big heap of junk in space

Nevertheless, Gray was also wrong, and this shows how difficult it is to precisely locate abandoned debris in the depths of space, according to astronomer Jonathan McDowell from the Faculty of Astrophysics (CFA) at Harvard University. McDowell advocates strict regulations to curb the growing amount of space debris.

Archyde.com/Scott Audette

A SpaceX Falcon 9 (archive image) launched in 2015 – and is still missing somewhere

At the end of January, the US space agency NASA announced that its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched in 2009 to map the lunar surface precisely, might enable observation of the impact. He is expected for March 4th, although according to McDowell the date is not entirely fixed. In any case, NASA spoke of an extraordinarily exciting moment for space exploration.

problem doesn’t get any smaller

With more and more countries competing to explore space, but also with commercial interests, the amount of space debris is also increasing. Last fall, the International Space Station (ISS) had to be temporarily evacuated because of the risk of colliding with the debris from a discarded satellite. The crew members retreated to two spacecraft docked at the ISS. The alert wasn’t the first aboard the space station in recent years.

According to an estimate by the European Space Agency (ESA) from last year, there are now around 130 million debris objects somewhere in space – ranging in size from a few millimeters to a few centimeters, including parts of broken satellites and fragments of spacecraft that have splintered off.

After the alarm on the ISS, the United States accused Russia of causing the missile test incident. Last year, NASA criticized China in particular for not paying enough attention to the problem of space debris.