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Whose rocket is going to fall on the Moon today?

2022-03-04T03:56:09.333Z


Part of a ship that went out of control in 2014 crashes into the surface of the satellite. Experts pointed to SpaceX and then to China. The accident illustrates the need to regulate the "wild west" that space has become


It may seem like an anecdote, but one of those that perfectly illustrates a problem.

A human-made object is going to fall on the Moon and it is not known for sure who it belongs to.

For the first time in history, part of a rocket unexpectedly hits the Earth's natural satellite without being able to attribute 100% responsibility for what happened to those who have launched their ships into space in recent years.

In any case, all calculations indicate that this Friday the 4th, at 1:25 p.m., Spanish peninsular time, the object will have fallen into the Hertzsprung crater, near the equator, on the hidden side of the Moon.

Initially, this object was attributed to a launch by SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, which would have been left in a chaotic orbit after boosting a solar monitoring satellite in 2014. Later, NASA warned that it could not be that device. , which did not go so far as to fall under the influence of the Moon, and that it is most likely one of the stages of a Chinese rocket that was carrying out missions in that year to prepare for its lunar research campaign.

The rocket booster that is going to impact the Moon on March 4 is from the Chang'e 5-T1 lunar mission, not DSCOVR.


GIF: https://t.co/AbEiejPB9Z pic.twitter.com/Aw5D1RsHO8

— Tony Dunn (@tony873004) February 13, 2022

The impact of this four-ton object will not have any consequences and, in fact, NASA recognizes that it may take even weeks to see the result, given its small size in proportion.

What it does suppose is a warning of what is happening in space.

“Deep space traffic is increasing.

And it's not like in the old days when only the US and the USSR sent devices into deep space, there are many countries and even commercial companies like SpaceX.

So I think it's time for the world to get more serious about regulating and cataloging activity in space," warned astronomer Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and a specialist in tracking space objects. .

Therefore, McDowell does not believe that it is a matter of looking for culprits, but solutions for the future, since this object has been watched by astronomers in their spare time: "Surprisingly, nobody is professionally dedicated to this: the fact that the phase [from the rocket] was initially misidentified adds emphasis to our lack of knowledge of man-made objects left in cislunar space [between the Earth and the Moon].”

An unsustainable race

Other specialists broaden the focus further.

“It is a perfect metaphor to understand that we are throwing objects into an environment, virgin until 70 years ago, and that we run the risk of destroying it.

It's like the Wild West”, says Alberto Águeda, coordinator of space surveillance programs at the GMV company, where they carry out work to control orbital scrap.

And he warns: "Our whole life depends on satellites and there will come a time when we cannot send more because of the lack of security."

The object in question is a propulsion phase of a rocket that was out of focus in 2014, in an orbit far from Earth, and that did not deserve more attention because so far away it could not interfere with other devices.

Bill Gray, the astronomer specializing in these objects who first warned that it would fall on the Moon, acknowledges that in 2015, seeing it for the first time, he was wrong to attribute this piece of space junk to SpaceX.

After the news broke, his colleague Jon Giorgini from NASA warned him that this trajectory did not match the initial one of Elon Musk's apparatus.

When reviewing the files, the one that fits is the propellant of the Chang'e 5-T1, a ship that served China to test its future lunar observation probe.

China denies that it is theirs.

"According to China's monitoring, the upper stage of the Chang'e-5 mission rocket fell through the Earth's atmosphere safely and burned up completely," an official spokesman said a few days ago.

But it was also questioned by the US Space Force squadron, which recorded the entry of this object into the Earth's atmosphere in October 2015, almost a year after launch.

However, the US space command rectified this data on Wednesday and acknowledged to SpaceNews that this Chinese propellant did not return to Earth, although it did not confirm that it is the object that would impact the Moon.

That body alone tracks some 43,000 space objects, but its efforts, like that of all those involved in these activities, are focused on the closest environment:

The University of Arizona has carried out independent analyzes that conclude that the material composition of the object matches that of Chinese rockets and not those of SpaceX.

“It is still

circumstantial

evidence ,” Gray wrote, “but I would consider it fairly eloquent.

So I am convinced that the object that is about to hit the moon on March 4, 2022 at 12:25 UTC is actually the Chang'e 5-T1 rocket stage.

lunar adventures

It will be the first time that a human object hits the Moon without that being its destiny, since some missions directed to the Earth's natural satellite had previously crashed.

Including ships loaded with little astronauts, the tiny tardigrades.

There have also been ships deliberately launched into its gray craters.

In 2009, NASA crashed its LCROSS mission on the Moon, revealing water in the resulting plume of dust, and the LADEE spacecraft did the same on the far side four years later.

The Smart-1 spacecraft of the European Space Agency (ESA) crashed into the Moon in 2006, also with the intention of observing and analyzing the phenomenon.

In this case,

"There are more and more problems of this type, because there are more and more launches and more space junk that should concern us," adds Águeda, who works with a team of more than 70 engineers just to monitor this junk.

"What lies beyond the Moon has not been perceived as a problem until now," explains Águeda, since there was almost no activity in that environment.

That is going to change this year: more than half a dozen missions from different countries are targeting the Moon in 2022.

In May, China uncontrollably dropped the remains of another rocket used in the assembly of its space station on Earth, which, although it finally fell in the Indian Ocean, caused a complaint from NASA for its “irresponsible” attitude.

Four months ago, Russia test-fired a missile to shoot down one of its old satellites, generating a dangerous rain of 1,500 pieces of junk, threatening astronauts on the International Space Station.

And in December, some devices from Starlink, also from Musk, provoked the complaint of China for endangering its space station.

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javier@esmateria.com

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Source: elparis

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