A discarded rocket part is on a collision course with the moon. But can the March 4 impact be seen from Earth? Questions and answers on the topic.
Frankfurt – Next Friday (March 4th, 2022) a discarded part of the rocket will be placed on the moon* fall. According to experts, there is a high probability that this is a Chinese rocket stage that the “Chang’e 5-T1” moon mission launched in October 2014. China denied initial reports*, according to which it is said to be a Chinese missile. However, experts assume that this is a case of confusion with a similarly named mission. At first it was said a SpaceX rocket stage hit the moon*, but experts later corrected this statement.
Experts have calculated the impact of the runaway rocket stage for March 4, 2022 at 1:25 p.m. The rocket part will hit in the middle of the day – this begs the question: can the rare event be seen from Earth? Answers to the most important questions about the impact on the moon.
Can you see the rocket impact on the moon from Earth?
No, the impact of the rocket on the moon will not be visible from Earth. And there are several reasons for this: Experts have calculated that the runaway rocket stage will hit the edge of the approximately 570-kilometer Hertzsprung crater. This crater is on the far side of the moon, which is never visible from Earth. But even if the rocket were to hit a different spot: On March 4, 2022, the moon is only illuminated by about five percent of the sunlight (full moon* is only on March 18th) – the probability that you will be able to see the point of impact should be low.
Can probes orbiting the moon see the rocket impact?
There are currently three spacecraft orbiting the moon:
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (Nasa) | 2009 |
Queqiao (China) | 2018 (not directly in lunar orbit) |
Chandrayaan-2 (India) | 2019 |
So far, there is only official information from the US space agency NASA*, which has had the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft in orbit around the moon since 2009. She cannot observe the impact live, but will try to find and photograph the resulting crater as soon as possible after the impact. The earliest LRO can see the Hertzsprung crater is around two weeks after the impact and will then take pictures of the impact site. They will have a resolution of about one meter per pixel. It is not yet known whether the Chinese and Indian space probes will also be looking for the crater.
Will the rocket impact harm the moon in any way?
No, the moon will not be harmed by the rocket stage impact. It has survived numerous impacts since its formation, as evidenced by its cratered surface. About 300,000 craters with a diameter of more than one kilometer are known on the side of the moon facing the earth alone. For most of these craters other celestial bodies – asteroids* or comets – responsible for hitting the moon. Compared to these sometimes gigantic craters, the discarded rocket that hits the moon on March 4 will leave behind a rather small crater: Experts assume that it will have a diameter of ten to 30 meters and be about two to three meters deep .
the Impact of the rocket stage from China on the moon* reminds of the NASA’s LCROSS probe* which the US space agency intentionally crashed onto the moon in 2009. The probe crashed into a crater near the South Pole, the bottom of which is permanently in shadow. The goal of the mission: The impact should stir up lunar dust from the crater and enable researchers to find out whether there is water ice in the crater. The mission was a complete success: scientists were able to find signs of water ice that were loosened by the impact.
What does science say about the impact on the moon?
Science is divided on the impact of the rocket stage on the moon: On the one hand, it is the first unplanned impact of a piece of space junk on the moon – an event that can change the moon and shows how far the space junk has already come in solar system has spread. As researcher Vishnu Reddy from the University of Arizona in Tucson found out, more than 150 objects orbited the moon – and at least 90 percent of them are junk, quoted the magazine Nature Reddy.
Rocket part size | 12 meters long |
Rocket part weight | 4500 kilograms |
speed at impact | around 9300 km/h |
Impact site on the moon | At the rim of Hertzsprung Crater (back side of the moon) |
On the other hand, the impact of the rocket part on the moon also represents an opportunity, as shown by NASA’s LCROSS mission and a look even further into the past. The impact of space probes on the moon “was partly aimed at in order to do science,” explains Ulrich Köhler from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to dpa. In the “Apollo” era of NASA, this was even part of the mission concept. “Moon modules were then uncoupled and placed on a collision course,” says Köhler. The vibration of the lunar soil was measured with a seismometer on the moon, from which conclusions could be drawn about the properties of the lunar crust.
Looking back: space travel used to crash its probes on the moon
This was also done on later moon missions. “The aim was to geochemically record the resulting ejecta cloud – for example to be able to detect ice molecules in isolated craters,” says Köhler, who assumes that the impending impact could also be “useful”. “The lunar soil has matured over millions of years due to solar wind, cosmic rays and impacted micrometeorites. The impact now uncovers material that is practically unadulterated – and that too on the far side of the moon, which has hardly been studied,” says the planetary geologist at the DLR Institute for Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof.
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The planetary scientist Paul Hayne (University of Colorado Boulder) sees the unintentional impact of the rocket part on the moon as an opportunity: together with his colleagues, he has been trying for a decade to find out how deep the lunar crater is, in which Nasa -probe LCROSS crashed, he explains on the portal The Conversation. “The random experiment of the impending crash will give planetary scientists the opportunity to observe a very similar crater in daylight. It will be like seeing LCROSS crater in detail for the first time,” says Haynes. (Tanya Banner) *fr.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
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