Astronomers now say the rocket about to strike the Moon is not a Falcon 9
Earlier DU thread: Out-of-control SpaceX rocket will smash into the moon in weeks
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Source: Ars Technica
SPACEX DOES NOT MARK THE SPOT —
Astronomers now say the rocket about to strike the Moon is not a Falcon 9
It's probable that the impact object comes from a Chinese rocket launched in 2014.
ERIC BERGER - 2/12/2022, 10:10 PM
About three weeks ago Ars Technica first reported that astronomers were tracking the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, and were increasingly confident that it would strike the Moon on March 4.
This story set off a firestorm of media activity. Much of this coverage criticized SpaceX for failing to properly dispose of the second stage of its Falcon 9 rocket after the launch of NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory mission, or DSCOVR, in 2015. The British tabloids, in particular, had a field day. Even the genteel European Space Agency tut-tutted, noting that it takes care to preserve enough fuel to put spent rocket stages into stable orbits around the Sun.
However, it turns out we were all wrong. A Falcon 9 rocket is not going to, in fact, strike the Moon next month. Instead, it's probably a Chinese rocket.
Bill Gray, who writes the widely used Project Pluto software to track near-Earth objects and was the original source for the Falcon 9 hitting the Moon story, acknowledged the error on his website Saturday. He explained that, back in 2015, he and other observers found an unidentified object in the sky and gave it a temporary name, WE0913A. Further observations suggested it probably was a human-made object, and soon the second stage of the rocket used to launch DSCOVR became a prime candidate.
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Read more: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/02/actually-a-falcon-9-rocket-is-not-going-to-hit-the-moon/
= new reply since forum marked as read
will be thrilled …
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