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ASpaceXrocket that launched nearly seven years ago is now on course to crash intothe moonlight , astronomer have predicted .
The Falcon 9 rocket was launched in February 2015 as part of a charge to send a mood observation satellite 930,000 miles ( 1.5 million km ) fromEarth , but since running out of fuel , the 4.4 - ton ( 4 measured tons ) rocket has been hurtling around space in a chaotic area .
The skyrocket ’s upper stage is now expected to hit the far side of the moon while traveling at a whip f number of 5,771 mph ( 9,288 km / h ) on March 4 , 2022 , agree to Bill Gray , a developer of computer software that tracks near - Earth objects .
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In a Jan. 21blog post , Gray noted that the space detritus had " made a close lunar flyby on January 5 " but is set for " a certain shock at March 4 . "
" This is the first unintentional showcase [ of rocket detritus bump off the moonshine ] of which I am aware , " Gray compose .
The now - defunct booster stage was air into space as a part of SpaceX ’s first thick - place mission . The company found the Deep Space Climate Observatory , a satellite designed to monitor both solar storms and Earth ’s mood , to a gravitationally unchanging Lagrange decimal point between the sun and Earth . After completing its task , the skyrocket ’s second stage ran out of fuel and start tumbling around Earth and the moon in an irregular orbit .
Jonathan McDowell , an astrophysicist at Harvard Universitywrote on Twitterconfirming the rocket ’s March 4 impingement . He wrote that while the shock was " interesting " it was " not a big mint . "
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Gray has forecast that the long , cylindric rocket stage should land somewhere around the moon ’s equator at its far side , meaning that the wallop will probably go unobserved . But its trajectory is n’t sure and could be altered by a few factors , let in radiation pressure from sunlight , which could cause the rocket to tumble sideways .
" Space rubble can be a little tricky , " Gray wrote in the blog station . " I have a somewhat everlasting mathematical model of what the Earth , Moon , Sun and planets are doing and how theirgravityis affecting the object . I have a rough estimate of how much sunlight is pushing outward on the aim , softly pushing it forth from the Sun … However , the actual effects of that sunshine are operose to predict dead . It does n’t just push outward ; some of it bounces ' sideways . ' "
A good prediction of where the quad bedding material will shoot down is important because it could enable satellites currently orbit the lunar month , such asNASA ’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and India ’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft , to observe the moon ’s subsurface contents let out by the encroachment crater , or even celebrate the impact itself .
This is n’t the first time a human - made satellite has crashed into the lunar month . In 2009 , NASA ’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite was fired into the moon ’s south pole at 5,600 mph ( 9,000 km / h ) , unleashing a plume that allowed scientists to detect the key signature of H2O ice .
Originally publish on Live Science
