Whose Rocket Hit the Moon? (techcrunch.com) 51
An anonymous reader shares a report: The short version of this story is that skywatchers led by Bill Gray had been tracking an object for months that, based on their calculations, would soon impact the moon. It was obviously a piece of rocket trash (rockets produce a ton of trash), but no one stepped up to say "yes, that's ours, sorry about that." Based on their observations and discussions, these self-appointed (though by no means lacking in expertise) object trackers determined that it was likely a piece of a SpaceX launch vehicle from 2015. But SpaceX didn't cop to it, and after a while Gray and others, including NASA, decided it was more likely to be the 2014 Chang'e 5-T1 launch out of China. China denied this is the case, saying the launch vehicle in question burned up on reentry.
Maybe they're telling the truth; maybe they don't want to be responsible for the first completely inadvertent lunar impact in history. Other spacecraft have struck the moon, but it was on purpose or part of a botched landing (in other words, the impact was intentional, just a little harder than expected) -- not just a wayward piece of space junk. Perhaps we'll never know, and really, that's the weirdest part of all. With hundreds of terrestrial telescopes and radars, space-based sensor networks and cameras pointing every which way -- and that's just the space monitoring we know about! -- it seems amazing that a whole rocket stage managed to sit in orbit for six or seven years, eventually getting all the way to the moon, without being identified.
Maybe they're telling the truth; maybe they don't want to be responsible for the first completely inadvertent lunar impact in history. Other spacecraft have struck the moon, but it was on purpose or part of a botched landing (in other words, the impact was intentional, just a little harder than expected) -- not just a wayward piece of space junk. Perhaps we'll never know, and really, that's the weirdest part of all. With hundreds of terrestrial telescopes and radars, space-based sensor networks and cameras pointing every which way -- and that's just the space monitoring we know about! -- it seems amazing that a whole rocket stage managed to sit in orbit for six or seven years, eventually getting all the way to the moon, without being identified.
Prep to send an ROV to investigate (Score:4, Insightful)
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How to Know, what you Don't Know. (Score:3)
"Perhaps we'll never know, and really, that's the weirdest part of all."
Really? We'll never know?
* zooms in on lunar tire tracks *
Weirdest part of all, assuming we'll never go back to the moon again and stare right at [brand name] imprinted on the rocket carcass laying there on front of our eyes.
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Urr. The chance of anywhere in the area of the crash being the best place to land is.. Miniscule.
So yes, it's very possible we might never know.
Although I suppose you could send a robot rover over there especially for that. But.. Why?
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Urr. The chance of anywhere in the area of the crash being the best place to land is.. Miniscule.
So yes, it's very possible we might never know.
Although I suppose you could send a robot rover over there especially for that. But.. Why?
Because we didn't even have that much of a justification, to put lunar tracks on the moon in the 60s. We wanted to. Because "we can." Because it hangs there in the night sky, taunting us.
Why ask Why. Try Bud Dry.
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Even my scientifically inclined mind is shying away from wanting to do that experiment...
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Because we didn't even have that much of a justification, to put lunar tracks on the moon in the 60s. We wanted to. Because "we can." Because it hangs there in the night sky, taunting us.
Wasn't it a reaction to the Soviet space program?
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Even if we went to the crash site, would there be anything identifiable left?
We are going to have similar problems with in-orbit debris. Hard to prove who it belongs to, i.e. who to send the bill when it hits your satellite.
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Even if we went to the crash site, would there be anything identifiable left?
Metal fragments, sure. These can be analyzed. The impact velocity was about 2.6 km/s - imparting about 1/4 of the kinetic energy required to vaporize aluminum (or aluminium for the rest of the world). This means that things were smashed into little bits, but not vaporized. Some really robust pieces of steel, titanium or some refractory metal might survived more of less intact, like part of a nozzle or valve.
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It's probably safe to say that whatever it was hit at about lunar escape speed, since it approached Luna from way out (from Earth, at least. Any place farther away than Earth means it approached at more than escape speed). Given that, it hit the ground at a speed that would be respectable for a modern tank's main gun (say, 1.8 - 2.2 km/s).
I
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It was a bit more than lunar escape velocity. 2.6 kilometers/second. [phys.org]
It wasn't me! (Score:2)
I swear, I had nothing to do with it!
My rockets always land as planned.
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I don't care vere zey come down
Zat's not my department says Werner von Braun.
It wasn't me (Score:2)
Ownership? (Score:2)
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Good point but I think other than the second stages of Falcon 9s, SpaceX has demonstrated good stewardship of recovering their space vehicles. Sure early on a lot of them blew up attempting to land but hey, they're trying.
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Good point but I think other than the second stages of Falcon 9s, SpaceX has demonstrated good stewardship of recovering their space vehicles. Sure early on a lot of them blew up attempting to land but hey, they're trying.
And they brought back several of those blown up chunks of first stages rather than ditch them in the ocean during development. They also fished some of the simulated ocean landings out of the ocean rather than letting them sink. There's photos of both, including a smashed first stage strapped to the barge on its side, and a tugboat towing a first stage through the water. Not only have they avoided more ocean trash than any prior rocket family by successfully recovering more than 100 first stage flights,
Look at multi-mile trash swathes in the ocean. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're almost all Chinese. [wikipedia.org]
the Ocean Conservancy reported that China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam dump more plastic in the sea than all other countries combined.[27] China alone is responsible for 30% of worldwide plastic ocean pollution (China has approximately 18% of the world's population).[28] Efforts to slow land generated debris and consequent marine debris accumulations have been undertaken by the Coastal Conservancy, Earth Day, and World Cleanup Day.[29][30][31][32]
Why wouldn't they treat the moon and space the same as the Earth?
Re:Look at multi-mile trash swathes in the ocean. (Score:4)
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Yep China dumps plastic in the Ocean, and the West dumps plastic in China. It's a nice way to explain that 30% / 18% discrepancy. China also took direct action. The numbers you cite from Wikipedia date back to a study in 2017. In 2017 China received on average 600,000 tonnes of imported plastic waste per month. On the back of the report and the resulting bad press China decided to stop accepting other country's waste. In 2018 the received on average less than 40,000 tonnes of plastic waste per year.
Timeline
Failed launch? (Score:2)
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Things in space cannot be hidden, unlike things floating in the ocean. The two situations are not at all similar.
Not the first (Score:2)
Maybe they're telling the truth; maybe they don't want to be responsible for the first completely inadvertent lunar impact in history.
"Inadvertent lunar impacts" happen all the time. They're what create the craters...
Re: Not the first (Score:2)
That's not inadvertent. It's perfectly predictable and normal. You know, "physics".
Inadvertent requires both agency and lack of attention.
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That's not inadvertent. It's perfectly predictable and normal. You know, "physics".
Inadvertent requires both agency and lack of attention.
By definition:
there is nothing pertaining to agency. While typically used in reference to a creature with agency, it is not a requirement. IE: "The tree inadvertently dropped its acorn in my flowerbed."
Last I checked, even if you want to consider this sentence anthropomorphism, the statement, "Space debris of any kind can inadvertently impact the moon, causing craters," would be an accurate
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Alright - off to pedant-land.
I content that which occurs through the simple following of physical laws - without agency - is the deliberate act of the state of the universe and the laws it follows.
Materials such as space debris were not put there solely though those means. They required agency. How long would you have to wait for a booster rocket to form spontaneously on the surface of a planet, launch into space, and subsequently intercept a planetary mass? It ain't happening. The development of intelligen
Nobody actually cares. (Score:5, Insightful)
it seems amazing that a whole rocket stage managed to sit in orbit for six or seven years, eventually getting all the way to the moon, without being identified.
Not amazing at all. The actual fact is, nobody really cares. A thousand tons of meteoritic material hits the moon per year. People love to do that "OMG, we are littering the pristine environment of the moon!" thing, but really one discarded rocket stage on the 38 million square kilometers of the moon is not even icing on the cake.
(I'll also point out that it's not all that easy to see stuff that's a few meters across at the distance of the moon unless you specifically know where to look.)
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one discarded rocket stage on the 38 million square kilometers of the moon is not even icing on the cake.
You imply that icing is something to be dismissed. Let me remind you that icing usually covers the entire cake!
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China - Those commies polluting and trashing everywhere they go, they better clean this up.
Musk - That Musk, privileged billionaires think they can abuse my moon? you got another thing coming
USA Apollo era - This crash site needs to be preserved as a monument to lunar history.
Everyone else - OMG I didn't even know they could reach lunar orbit.
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Rocket Small - Space Extremely Big (Score:3)
Arkonides? (Score:1)
New opportunities? (Score:2)
Now we know that most any vehicle could carry some small, simple science experiment and it might get somewhere useful.
Oh, they got to be doing that already. N/M.
It's the Mooninites again! Damn pesky bastards! (Score:3)
You bastards! Time to nuke the moon and get rid of them once and for all! [boston.com]
My assumption? Top secret stuff (Score:2)
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Cause the brief is correct...with all the various monitoring gear around the globe you can't tell me no one knows who launched that.
NORAD maybe has an idea but they can't be certain. Their radars don't reach out even to the Moon, let alone so far past it that they can accurately track all that stuff.
Which is why they're asking for money for bigger and better radars. Between Artemis and Chinese lunar bases, there's going to be a whole lot more traffic that they can't track accurately, and that's a problem.
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NORAD radar reaches to the moon.
And it nearly caused world war 3 because the rising moon was considered a Russian nuclear strike.
However I doubt an old NORAD radar system would be able to pick up a rocket as far away as the moon.
It's a UFO! (Score:2)
Well, it WAS a UFO anyway, though it's no longer flying.
I heard NASA is trying to investigate UFOs. Well now we have Exhibit A, and we know exactly where it is!
But we'd better hurry, before the other aliens come back to clean up the evidence.
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I am not saying it is Aliens (Score:2)
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Teen age aliens, from the look of it. The alien equivalent of Bob Falfa.
Sorry, it was mine (Score:2)
False Claim In Summary (Score:2)
... maybe they don't want to be responsible for the first completely inadvertent lunar impact in history. Other spacecraft have struck the moon, but it was on purpose or part of a botched landing (in other words, the impact was intentional, just a little harder than expected) -- not just a wayward piece of space junk.
There have [space.com] been many [space.com] rocket stages [discovermagazine.com] that have [seeker.com] crashed into [nytimes.com] the Moon [go.com]. All launches that drop stages at various points place them on a known trajectory (if the launch was successful) that may in the future intersect the Moon in a completely predictable way. So the claim that this is the first completely inadvertent lunar impact in history is almost certainly false, and depends on a narrow, carefully customized definition of "inadvertent" to make the claim have any degree of plausibility.
Couple of students? (Score:1)
I remember years ago some guys managed to get a camera way up into the stratosphere and take pictures. They were able to recover the camera. I think that happened maybe 15-20 years ago? Since then I wondered when someone was going to land on the moon and post it to Slashdot.
I did it, Here is how I did it, Here are pictures, aren't I great?
Then the nastiness of everyone that didn't do it hits. Eventually comparing them to Hitler. Because that's where everything goes, isn't it?
I demand reparations from China (Score:1)
That part of the Moon is sacred to me and they destroyed it.