Space junk on 5,800-mph collision course with moon

The moon is about to get walloped by 3 tons of space junk, a punch that will carve out a crater that could fit several semitractor-trailers.

The leftover rocket will hit the far side of the moon at 5,800 mph (9,300 kph) on Friday. It may take weeks or even months to confirm the impact.

It has been tumbling through space since China launched it a decade ago. Chinese officials are not sure if it is theirs.

Scientists expect an object to carve out a hole 33 feet to 66 feet (10 to 20 meters) across and send moon dust hundreds of miles across the barren, pockmarked surface.

It's easy to track low-orbiting space junk. Most of the time, objects launching deeper into space are not likely to hit anything, except for a few people who enjoy playing detective on the side.

The asteroid tracker Bill Gray identified the collision course in January, and that's when SpaceX took the credit for the upcoming lunar litter. He said the mystery object was not the upper stage of a rocket from the launch of a deep space climate observatory for NASA.

Gray said it was likely the third stage of a Chinese rocket that sent a sample capsule to the moon. The upper stage burned up after reentering Earth's atmosphere, according to Chinese ministry officials.

The test flight and 2020's lunar sample return mission have the same designation.

The U.S. Space Command confirmed Tuesday that the Chinese upper stage from the lunar mission never left the Earth's atmosphere. It was not possible to confirm the country of origin of the object about to hit the moon.

A spokesman said in a statement that they focus on objects closer to the Earth.

Gray, a mathematician and physicist, said he is confident that it is a China rocket.

He said that he has become a little bit more cautious of such matters.

The effect will be the same, as noted by Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It will leave a small crater on the moon.

The moon has many craters, ranging from 1,600 miles to 2,500 kilometers. With little to no atmosphere, the moon is defenseless against the constant bombardment of meteorites and asteroids. Impact craters last forever because there is no weather.

China has a lunar lander on the far side of the moon, but it will be too far away to detect Friday's impact. NASA's lunar rior will be out of range. India's moon-orbiting Chandrayaan-2 is unlikely to pass by then.

I had been waiting for something to hit the moon for a long time. Gray said it would have hit on the near side of the moon, where we could see it.

Gray took another look at his claim after an engineer at NASA questioned his claim. He's pretty thoroughly convinced that it's a Chinese rocket part, based on the data received from its ham radio experiment.

The Center for Earth Near Object Studies supports Gray. A University of Arizona team recently identified the Chinese Long March rocket segment from the light reflected off its paint.

It is about 40 feet (12 meters) long and 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter and can be done every two to three minutes.

Gray said that he never received a challenge to his original claim. The Chinese have not.

It's not a problem with SpaceX or with China. Gray said that nobody is particularly careful about what they do with junk.

Tracking deep space mission leftovers is difficult. During flybys, the moon's gravity can change an object's path. There is no readily available database, aside from the ones that werebbled together by Gray and a couple others.

We are in an era where many countries and private companies are putting stuff in deep space, so it is time to keep track of it.

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