Astronomers have predicted that a rocket launched seven years ago will crash into the moon.
Since running out of fuel, the rocket has been hurtling around space in a chaotic pattern.
Bill Gray, the developer of software that tracks near-Earth objects, said that the rocket is expected to hit the far side of the moon on March 4, 2022, at a speed of 9,288 km/h.
5 strange, cool things we have recently learned about the moon.
The space junk made a close lunar flyby on January 5, but is set for a certain impact on March 4.
This is the first case of rocket debris hitting the moon that I am aware of.
The booster was part of the first deep-space mission. The Deep Space Climate Observatory is a satellite designed to monitor both solar storms and Earth's climate. The second stage of the rocket ran out of fuel and fell around Earth and the moon.
A Harvard University astronomer confirmed the March 4 impact of a rocket. The impact was interesting, but not a big deal, he wrote.
According to Gray, the long, cylindrical rocket should land somewhere around the moon's equator at its far side, meaning that the impact will likely go unobserved. Radiation pressure from sunlight could cause the rocket to fall sideways.
Gray wrote in the post that space junk can be a little tricky. I don't know how much sunlight is pushing out on the object, but it is moving it away from the Sun. It doesn't just push outward, some of it bounces.
A good prediction of where the space litter will land is important because it could enable satellites currently circling the moon to observe the moon's contents.
This is not the first time a satellite has crashed into the moon. In 2009, NASA launched its lunar crater observation and observing satellite into the south pole at 5,600 mph, unleashing a plume that allowed scientists to detect the key signatures of water ice.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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