Elon Musk SpaceX rocket on collision course with moon

A rocket is on its way to crash into the moon and explode.

After completing its mission, the Falcon 9 booster did not have enough fuel to return to Earth, so it remained in space.

It will be the first time a rocket collision with the moon has been recorded.

The effects will be small.

Seven years ago, the rocket was abandoned after it sent a space weather satellite on a million-mile journey.

It was part of Mr Musk's space exploration programme, which is intended to get humans living on other planets.

The path of the rocket has been pulled by different forces of the earth, moon and sun since 2015, according to Prof. McDowell from the US-based Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

It has been dead since it was following the laws of gravity.

It is among millions of other pieces of space junk, which are machinery discarded in space after completing missions without enough energy to return to earth.

Over the decades there have been 50 large objects that we have lost track of. This may have happened a lot of times before, but we didn't notice. This would be the first confirmed case.

Eric Berger, a journalist, and Bill Gray, a data analyst, identified the projected demise of Falcon 9 in their writings.

The rocket will explode as it makes contact with the ground on 4 March.

It is a four-ton empty metal tank with a rocket engine on the back. If you imagine throwing that at a rock at 5,000 miles an hour, it will not be happy.

There will be a small artificial crater on the moon.

Bill Gray, who uses software to track near-Earth space objects, claims that it made a close fly-by on January 5. He says it is likely to hit the far side of the moon on 4 March.

A similar-sized rocket was crashed into the moon in an experiment performed by Prof. McDowell. The evidence of the collision was gathered by the sensors.

Scientists are unlikely to learn anything new from this crash.

There could be consequences in the future if space debris is left to drift and occasionally crash.

If we get into the future where there are cities and bases on the moon, we want to know. Slow traffic in space makes it easier to get that organised.

Between now and 4 March, what will happen? The rocket will continue to follow the laws of gravity, careening through space, before it crashes into the moon.