Space junk to slam into far side of moon this Friday
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — 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 smash into the far side of the moon at 5,800 mph on Friday, away from telescopes’ prying eyes. It may take weeks, even months, to confirm the impact through satellite images.
It’s been tumbling haphazardly through space, experts believe, since China launched it nearly a decade ago. But Chinese officials are dubious it’s theirs.
No matter whose it is, scientists expect the object to carve out a hole 33 feet to 66 feet across and send moon dust flying hundreds of miles across the barren, pockmarked surface.
Low-orbiting space junk is relatively easy to track. Objects launching deeper into space are unlikely to hit anything, and these far-flung pieces are usually soon forgotten, except by a handful of observers who enjoy playing celestial detective on the side.
AP Photo/Michael Sohn
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.
SpaceX originally took the rap for the upcoming lunar litter after asteroid tracker Bill Gray identified the collision course in January. He corrected himself a month later, saying the “mystery” object was not a SpaceX Falcon rocket upper stage from the 2015 launch of a deep space climate observatory for NASA.
Gray said it was likely the third stage of a Chinese rocket that sent a test sample capsule to the moon and back in 2014. But Chinese ministry officials said the upper stage had reentered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up.
But there were two Chinese missions with similar designations — the test flight and 2020’s lunar sample return mission — and U.S. observers believe the two are getting mixed up.
The U.S. Space Command, which tracks lower space junk, confirmed Tuesday that the Chinese upper stage from the 2014 lunar mission never deorbited, as previously indicated in its database. But it could not confirm the country of origin for the object about to strike the moon.
“We focus on objects closer to the Earth,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Gray, a mathematician and physicist, said he’s confident now that it’s China’s rocket. “I’ve become a little bit more cautious of such matters,” he said. “But I really just don’t see any way it could be anything else.”
The moon already bears countless craters, ranging up to 1,600 miles. With little to no real atmosphere, the moon is defenseless against the constant barrage of meteors and asteroids, and the occasional incoming spacecraft, including a few intentionally crashed for science’s sake. With no weather, there’s no erosion, and so impact craters last forever.
China has a lunar lander on the moon’s far side, but it will be too far away to detect Friday’s impact just north of the equator. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will also be out of range. It’s unlikely India’s moon-orbiting Chandrayaan-2 will be passing by then, either.
“I had been hoping for something (significant) to hit the moon for a long time. Ideally, it would have hit on the near side of the moon at some point where we could actually see it,” Gray said.
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Incredible NASA photos of the sunNASA/SDO/AIA
Every child, at least once in their life, has been admonished to not stare at the sun for so long lest they go blind. But does looking at the sun really cause blindness, or is that just an old wives’ tale? Turns out, it’s a bit of both. The retina most certainly can be damaged by staring straight at the sun, but it would take several minutes of uninterrupted focus for that to happen.
In order to cause permanent injury to the eye, the retina would need to heat up by 50 degrees Fahrenheit. And at the brightest point of the day, when sun-induced eye damage is most likely, the average person can only look at the sun long enough to experience a 39-degree Fahrenheit increase in corneal temperature. After that, our natural defenses take over and our sensitive eyes begin to water and burn, which typically causes us to blink and look away before long-term harm can be done.
Fortunately, there are better and easier ways to get a good look at the sun. We can, for example, peruse NASA’s online gallery of sun photos. Over the last 100 years alone, the agency has taken thousands of photographs of the star. In the following slides, Stacker has rounded up 10 incredible photos of the sun from space taken by the agency. These images are a much clearer and safer way of getting a good look at the glowing ball of gas at the center of our solar system.
You may also like: 50 images of the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope
NASA/SDO/AIAEvery child, at least once in their life, has been admonished to not stare at the sun for so long lest they go blind. But does looking at the sun really cause blindness, or is that just an old wives’ tale? Turns out, it’s a bit of both. The retina most certainly can be damaged by staring straight at the sun, but it would take several minutes of uninterrupted focus for that to happen.
In order to cause permanent injury to the eye, the retina would need to heat up by 50 degrees Fahrenheit. And at the brightest point of the day, when sun-induced eye damage is most likely, the average person can only look at the sun long enough to experience a 39-degree Fahrenheit increase in corneal temperature. After that, our natural defenses take over and our sensitive eyes begin to water and burn, which typically causes us to blink and look away before long-term harm can be done.
Fortunately, there are better and easier ways to get a good look at the sun. We can, for example, peruse NASA’s online gallery of sun photos. Over the last 100 years alone, the agency has taken thousands of photographs of the star. In the following slides, Stacker has rounded up 10 incredible photos of the sun from space taken by the agency. These images are a much clearer and safer way of getting a good look at the glowing ball of gas at the center of our solar system.
You may also like: 50 images of the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope
