Space junk hurtling toward the moon at speed of 5,800 mph

Thomas Leffler
·3 min read

An impact on the far side of the moon will soon create a crater wider than a school bus on the lunar surface.

According to The Associated Press, leftover space junk from a rocket mission will impact the Earth's celestial companion on Friday, March 4, with approximately three tons of debris hurtling into the moon's surface at 5,800 miles per hour. The impact will create a crater between 33 and 66 feet in diameter, according to the AP. On impact, the debris will send moon dust hundreds of miles across the lunar surface.

Due to lack of atmosphere, craters are very common on the moon, remaining on the surface after impact due to lack of weather-causing erosion. These impacts, taking up over 1,000 miles of the surface, are created by multitudes of meteors and asteroids as well as space junk.

This 2011 image, made available by NASA, shows the lunar far side. This area is expected to be hit with three tons of debris on March 4, with experts stating the impact will create a crater up to 66 feet in diameter. (Photo by NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University via AP)

The landing zone of the space debris, which is expected to hit on March 4, will keep the impact away from satellite detection, at least temporarily. Several detection devices for impacts, including a Chinese lunar lander and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, will be too far away to determine the crater's full extent. More information about the impact may take months to come to light.

"I had been hoping for something (significant) to hit the moon for a long time," mathematician and physicist Bill Gray stated on his asteroid-tracking website Project Pluto. "Ideally, it would have hit on the near side of the moon at some point where we could actually see it."

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Gray has been at the forefront of determining the cause of the space junk impact, eventually settling on China's Chang'e 5-T1 booster, part of a rocket used in a 2014 mission.

On Feb. 21, 2022, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the booster was not the object headed for the moon's surface, yet Gray says the Ministry had confused the 2014 mission with a November 2020 mission.

Impact craters cover the surface of the moon, seen from Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022. A leftover rocket is expected to smash into the far side of the moon at 5,800 mph (9,300 kph) on Friday, March 4, 2022. It may take weeks, even months, to confirm the impact through satellite images. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

In the 2020 mission, the rocket booster had re-entered over the Pacific Ocean, whereas experts determined the 2014 mission's booster had not de-orbited. Gray called this "probably an honest error on the part of the Foreign Ministry." On March 2, United States Space Command officials confirmed that the 2014 Chinese lunar mission "never de-orbited."

While not 100% certain that the 2014 mission is the catalyst for the March 4 impact, Gray stated that his evidence is "fairly convincing," based on the composition of the object amid other factors. Before settling on the Chinese mission as the cause, Gray's investigation initially pointed toward a 2015 SpaceX launch of a deep space climate observatory for NASA before further data prompted a correction.

In the midst of his investigation, Gray stated that the impact is not "a China problem" but rather a worldwide issue with how space mission debris is treated.

"Nobody is particularly careful about what they do with junk at this sort of orbit," Gray said.

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