The second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket is expected to hit the Moon in a matter of weeks, as it has been tumbling uncontrollably in space since 2015, but experts say its seven-year journey is coming to an end.
Bill Gray, creator of Project Pluto, said that the spent rocket stage is expected to hit somewhere near the lunar equator on March 4. There is still some uncertainty about the exact location and timing of the collision, but the current data shows a certain impact.
The second stage poses no threat to life or equipment and will produce a new lunar impact crater. It is not likely to be seen from Earth.
The old Falcon 9 second stage is going to hit the moon on March 4. It's interesting, but not a big deal, says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He said that things left in the cislunar orbit are unstable and will either hit the Moon or the Earth.
The Falcon 9 rocket was launched in Florida on February 11, 2015. It was the first launch of a U.S. research satellite by a private company and the first launch of a private company's first rocket. The delivery of the Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, which monitors solar winds in real time from L1, was a success.
The neutral gravitational spot of DSCOVR was some 932,000 miles from Earth. The second stage lacked the energy to escape the gravity of Earth's atmosphere and it did not have enough fuel to return to Earth.
According to Gray's data, the rocket stage is tumbling about once every 180.7 seconds or 90.4 seconds. More observations are needed to confirm the booster's movements, as the Yarkovsky effect could affect an object's drift rate and projected time of impact.
The booster will hit the lunar surface at speeds of 1.6 miles per second (2.58 km/s), but Gray believes that the impact itself will have to go unobserved.
This will be the first time that a piece of space junk will reach the Moon. The failed landing of India's Vikram probe and Israel's Beresheet probe were recent examples of our stuff crashing onto the surface. In 2009, NASA crashed the upper stage of the LCROSS mission onto the Moon.
A new image shows the space telescope in its final location.
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