If you don't know the French film, you've probably seen the famous image of a rocket hitting the Man in the Moon.
Life will imitate art after a hundred and twenty years.
A four-ton rocket booster was recently spotted by Bill Gray, who tracks objects in near-moon circles for asteroid hunters in his spare time. It will be the first known space junk to crash into the moon.
The piece of metal is traveling at an estimated 3.3 miles per second and is expected to make a 65-foot crater. NASA and the European Space Agency have given credibility to the findings, even though they weren't monitoring the high-flying space junk. At 7:26 a.m., the impact will happen. The time is 11 pm.
China denied ownership of the rocket, saying it burned up in the atmosphere.
It is hard to not imagine the man wincing from the blow. Maybe he no longer flinches because it will be the first time a rocket has slammed into his face or that junk has been scattered on the surface. The question is how much moon destruction, contamination, and litter is acceptable to us.
"The public kind of gets it, but we haven't yet seen thinking about this in terms of an environmental movement."
Scott Shackelford, an Indiana University professor of business and ethics, is working on a framework for addressing space junk. In the animated film, the robot Wall-E spends centuries collecting garbage in a wasteland.
How climate change affected the Earth.
Apollo-era lunar roving vehicles are among the 800 known items humans have left on the moon, according to NASA. Credit: NASA
In 2012 NASA published an inventory of about 800 items the agency knows were discarded or installed. The purpose was to keep a log of the items on the moon so they can be preserved.
The poop of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are historical artifacts. Some consider them to be science.
The moon has not been pristine for 70 years. Whether to lighten the load for the trip home or conduct research, nations that have reached the far- flung destination have left their share of litter. Three years ago, Israel's failed Beresheet landing left its mark, spilling dehydrated tardigrades and water bears among its crashed cargo.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, stands beside an American flag placed on the moon during Apollo 11. Credit: Bettmann / Getty Images
Space exploration involves the destruction of stuff.
Jonathan McDowell is an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
His attention is on how deep space junk could affect humans and affect their interests, like science experiments on the moon. There isn't a lot of lunar space compared to Earth. More traffic for lunar missions is what McDowell envisions in 30 years. He said that garbage or collision could become a serious problem.
Few are watching.
The astronomer who discovered the rocket's moon-bound trajectory is rooting for the hit. He mused that scientists could learn from it. It is not a threat to Earth if a rocket crashes into the moon.
The rocket, which was launched about eight years ago, is one of the few left that can change in a chaotic way. When a rocket is in low-Earth orbit, it can re-enter the atmosphere. If a rocket is sent farther out to a roomy space around the sun, it will be lost forever.
An Israeli man reacts after the Beresheet spacecraft fails to land safely on the moon on April 11, 2019, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Credit: Amir Levy / Getty Images
The debris could fall back to Earth, get spit out into the atmosphere, or even be sucked into the moon's gravity.
Leaving a rocket in an unpredictable state and not keeping tabs on its location is not a crime.
Just to be clear, this is not a boo boo. At least, not by current standards. It is fine to leave your rocket in this sort of intermediate trajectory.
The European Space Agency believes that the upcoming crash highlights the need for policy, not just for the space around Earth, but also the moon.
It would take international consensus to establish effective regulations, but Europe can certainly lead the way, said Holger Krag, head of the agency's space safety program in a written statement.
The issue of little oversight and accountability for space junk is at the center of Shackelford's research, though he is focused on objects closer to the planet. Major space treaties have stopped. A framework to regulate debris in space has been proposed by him and others. It is a type ofenvironmentalism.
The green movement is an outgrowth of Astro-environmentalism. The idea is that development in space should meet the needs of current generations without disrupting the development goals of future generations.
Elinor Ostrom was awarded a prize for her work on the governance of common resources. Polycentric governance is when different groups come together to manage resources.
A section of thermal insulation tile high above Earth flies outside the Space Shuttle Columbia in January 1986. Credit: Space Frontiers / Archive Photos / Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The Department of Defense tracks about 27,000 artificial objects near Earth that are 4 inches or larger, but many smaller pieces can't be detected. Credit: Philipp Igumnov / Getty Images
The Paris Agreement on climate change is a real-life example of polycentric governance. Local, state, and national government, along with the public and academia, can coordinate on widespread issues.
Through the workshop, Shackelford and his colleagues think they can make progress on a large space junk problem. The Department of Defense tracks artificial objects that are 4 inches or larger, but many smaller objects can not be seen. About 500,000 marble-size objects are not monitored by NASA.
That is worrisome. Garbage like a screw can endanger satellites and astronauts. When the International Space Station had to move to avoid debris from a Russian satellite, it highlighted the problem.
"The clock is ticking."
The first step in the project was to build a database of over 1,500 international space actors, including nations, institutions, and private companies. They will determine which parties are the most influential and active.
He said that if you get this group at the table, you can make things happen quickly even in a complex system like this one.
A space governance policy lab will be hosted by the workshop to work with non-governmental organizations and companies that want to address these issues. The process will look at codes of conduct and graduated sanctions against bad actors.
The NELIOTA project, funded by the European Space Agency, detects a lunar impact flash on March 1, 2017. Credit: NELIOTA / ESA
When I first started working on this stuff 20 years ago, it was pretty far-out. The international community doesn't do a good job of acting on deadlines.
When the rocket goes rogue Friday, it won't be the first human-made object to hit the moon. Apollo-era rockets were targeted by NASA to create moonquakes. In 2006 the Smart-1 spaceship crashed into the moon so scientists could study the event like a meteorite impact. In 2009, NASA crashed its LCROSS mission into the moon, revealing water in the debris.
Some people think that the upcoming crash won't be the first accidental crater, just the first people aware of it. Between the 1960s and 1980s, about 50 human-made objects were left in chaotic orbits. For decades, the asteroid-monitoring surveys have not spotted them.
"If I had to put money on it, I would guess five or six of them hit the moon, and we don't know about it."
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