A rocket will indeed reach the lunar surface on March 4, but contrary to what has been reported, it was not built by Elon Musk’s company but by Beijing, experts now claim, quoted by The Guardian.
According to them, the error in the identity of the rocket that hit the lunar surface highlights the difficulties of localization in deep space. They would have misinterpreted the secrets of the night sky.
Initially, experts claimed that the Falcon 9 rocket, launched in February 2015, would hit the moon on March 4. Now, the rocket that will do so has been identified as 2014-065B, the Chang’e 5-T1 booster, launched in 2014 as part of the Chinese space agency’s lunar exploration program.
The surprise announcement was made by astronomer Bill Gray, who was the first to identify the future impact, and who admitted his mistake last weekend.
“This (honest mistake) only highlights the problem of the lack of proper tracking of these deep space objects,” tweeted astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
“The object had regarding the brightness we expected, appeared at the expected time, and was moving in a reasonable orbit,” he wrote in the post.
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