NASA has found the place where it crashed a mysterious “out of control” rocket that hit the dark side of the moon in early March this year.
The images taken by the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) of the american space agency on May 25 they revealed a double crater formed by the impact of the rocket.
While the identity of the rocket body remains “unclear,” NASA revealed last week that the crater is actually “two craters”: one, an eastern crater regarding 60 feet (18 meters) in diameter that overlaps to a western crater 52 feet (16 meters) in diameter.
The new findings, according to Mark Robinson, principal investigator for the LRO camera team, may indicate that the rocket body that slammed into the lunar surface might have had large masses at each end.
“Usually a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the end of the motor; the remainder of the rocket stage consists primarily of an empty fuel tank. Since the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the dual nature of the crater may help indicate its identity,” said Dr. Robinson.
“No other rocket body impact on the Moon created double craters,” NASA noted in a blog post.
Some space experts say if the impact had occurred at a shallow angle, it might have created a double crater.
The object, which traveled through space at almost 60,000 miles (96,500 kilometers) per hour, was initially suspected to be a rocket booster. SpaceX Falcon 9.
But scientists led by Vishnu Reddy of the University of Arizona in EE.UU., who closely monitored the rotation and reflection of light from the spent rocket, suggested that it might be from chinese origin.
They said the space debris may have been the propellant part of a rocket that launched China’s Chang’e 5-T1 spacecraft to the moon in 2014, something China has denied.
While there have been several instances in the past of debris hitting the lunar surface, including Luna 2 from the sovietic Union in 1959, experts said the rocket’s runaway collision was the first due to space debris traveling through space.
