A piece of a rocket that was abandoned in space after completing its mission will crash into the Moon in March, according to experts.
The Deep Space Climate Observatory was put into space by the rocket in 2015.
Bill Gray, an astronomer, told Agence France-Presse that the second stage of the rocket has been floating in a chaotic circle.
Gray calculated the new collision course with the Moon.
Gray said that the booster passed close to the Moon in January.
He is behind Project Pluto, a software that allows for calculating the trajectory of asteroids and other objects in space and is used in NASA-financed space observation programs.
The rocket stage flew close to the Moon a week ago, and Gray concluded it would crash into the dark side of the Moon on March 4.
Gray had appealed to the amateur astronomer community to join him in observing the booster.
The exact time and spot of impact may change slightly from his forecast but there is widespread agreement that there will be a collision on the Moon that day.
I have been tracking junk for about 15 years. Gray told Agence France-Presse that this is the first unintentional lunar impact.
It is possible that similar impacts have taken place without being noticed, according to Astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
There are at least 50 objects that were left in deep Earth in the 60s, 70s and 80s. He said that they did not track them.
We are picking up a few of them, but a lot of them are not there anymore.
The impact of the rocket chunk on the Moon will not be visible from Earth in real time.
It will leave a crater that scientists will be able to observe with satellites, and thus learn more about the geology of the Moon.
During the Apollo missions, spacecraft were crashed into the moon to test seismometers.
In 2009, NASA sent a rocket stage to look for water on the Moon.
Most rockets don't go far from Earth. The rocket boosters are brought back through the Earth's atmosphere. The first stage is used again.
As the US and Chinese space programs leave more junk in the sky, there could be more crashes into the Moon.
These events start to be problematic when there is a lot of traffic.
It is not the job of anyone to keep track of the junk that we leave out in the deep earth.
A request for comment from the company was not immediately responded to.
NASA should be able to send astronauts back to the Moon by the year 2025.
Agence France-Presse
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