The crash site of the mystery rocket booster that slammed into the far side of the Moon has been found by the LRO.
A double crater formed by the rocket's impact was revealed in the LRO images.
There is a double crater. Double craters are not impossible if an object hits at a low angle. That seems to be the case here.
Bill Gray, the astronomer who discovered the object and predicted its demise in January, said that the booster came in at about 15 degrees from vertical. That isn't the reason for this one.
The impact site consists of two craters, one in the east and the other in the west. Mark Robinson is the principal investigator of the LRO Camera team.
Before (2022-02-28) and after image (2022-05-21) of the Moon. (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)
The rest of the rocket stage consists of an empty fuel tank. The crater's double nature may help to indicate its identity since the origin of the rocket body is still unknown.
What is this thing?
There is a long story. The rocket that launched NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) to the Sun- Earth L1 Lagrange Point was identified as a SpaceX upper stage.
When Gray's software pinged an error, he was able to see the object. He told The Washington Post that his software was unable to project the past March 4 because the rocket had hit the Moon.
A few weeks after Gray spread the word, he received an email from Jon Giorgini at the JPL.
The booster should not have taken it near the Moon. In order to reconcile the conflicting trajectory, Gray dug back into his data and discovered that he had misidentified the DSCOVR booster.
It was not the culprit after all. There was still an object in the sky. What was that thing?
Gray deduced that it was the upper stage of China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission, a technology demonstration mission that lay the groundwork for Chang'e 5, which successfully returned a lunar sample to Earth in 2020
The new theory for the object's identity was supported by some corroborating evidence.
There was a solution to the mystery.
The Foreign Minister of China claimed that it wasn't their booster that crashed into the ocean.
Gray thinks the Foreign Minister made an honest mistake by confusing Chang'e 5-T1 with the similarly named Chang'e 5, which sunk into the ocean.
The fact that the LRO team was able to locate the impact site so quickly is an impressive feat. It was found just months after impact, thanks to the help of Gray and JPL.
It took more than six years for the Apollo 16 S-IVB impact site to be found.
Bill Gray's account of the booster identification saga is here. You can find the LRO images here.
This article was published in the past. The original article is worth a read.
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