China says moonbound rocket stage was not from 2014 lunar mission: Report

Several recent reports have said that the rocket stage set to slam into the moon on March 4 is from a mission.

Several independent observations suggest that the rocket is from the Chang'e 5-T1 mission in 2014, following a misidentification that said the stage was part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite in February 2015. The rocket for Change-5-T1 was destroyed shortly after it was launched, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

According to China's monitoring, the upper stage of the rocket related to the Chang'e-5 mission entered into Earth's atmosphere and burned up.

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Wang was referring to a test mission known as Chang'e-5-T1, which is a step away from the more famous Chang'e 5 mission that brought a sample of the moon back to Earth in December 2020. The data from the U.S. Space Force's 18th Space Control Squadron shows that the Chinese rocket stage reentered the atmosphere in October 2015, SpaceNews said.

China has been criticized several times in recent years for its practices concerning space debris, most recently including the re-entry of a huge Long March 5B rocket in May 2021, that fortunately resulted in no casualties. The International Space Station was forced to make an evasive maneuver in November of 2021.

Wang said that China is aware of international space standards regarding the removal of space debris, which can lead to in-orbit collisions or damage on the ground from larger objects re-entering the atmosphere.

China's space endeavors are always in line with international law and are ready to have extensive exchanges and cooperation with all sides.

The latest findings from Space Force are not without controversy, and China's denial illustrates the difficulty of tracking objects in deep space after launch.

Bill Gray told SpaceNews that Space Force is focused on objects that are close to Earth. The mission of the Space Force is to offer United States decision makers military options to achieve national objectives.

Gray was credited with discovering the incoming moonbound object. He wrote a post explaining why he thought the object was from the Chinese rocket and why he thinks it's from the Chinese rocket.

Gray pointed out in the update that the tracking data so far provided is radar spotting from shortly after China's launch. He said that asteroid watchers have seen that object in the past.

The Change-5T1 booster would have been well beyond the range of radar during much of that year. Gray said that he was not sure if 18SPCS were actually following Space Force's data.

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