They say the moon has a new crater, caused by space debris

the moon He has another hole. stage rocket That wandered in space for years hit it on Friday, according to experts, but since it can’t be directly observed, it will take patience to see it in pictures.

The collision occurred at 12:25 BST on the far side of the moon, according to astronomer Bill Gray, who was the first to identify the impending collision.

He told AFP that the cylindrical object was moving at more than 9,000 kilometers per hour and likely caused a crater “10 to 20 meters in diameter.”

Its trajectory was calculated from observations made by telescopes on Earth.

“We have a lot of data on this object,” Bill Gray said, and he estimates that it hit the moon “this morning.”

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The rocket that created another hole on the moon’s surface

The identification of the rocket has been the subject of debate because no one officially deals with the recording and tracking of space debris in deep space.

Gray, the creator of the software used by funded monitoring programs NASAhe watches them so that they are not confused with asteroids, and in this way, time is not wasted studying them in vain.

It was initially thought that the debris from a missile SpaceX But in the end it was concluded that it was a Chinese ship, specifically a stage of the Long March rocket, which launched in 2014 on a mission called Chang’e 5-T1, as part of the country’s lunar exploration program.

Photo: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University via AP

Beijing denied this and asserted that the theater had “safely entered the Earth’s atmosphere” and “completely burned”.

But according to Gray, China mixed up two missions with similar names and was actually talking about launching a missile much later.

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Is it possible to see the new crater of the moon?

In any case, the crater can only be seen by NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) or India’s Chandrayaan-2, both of which are in orbit around this star.

The US space agency confirmed in January that it wanted to find the crater, but warned that the process could take “weeks”.

According to Gray, the two probes can monitor the entire region of the moon once a month.

It’s not unusual for rocket stages to be left behind in the universe, but it’s the first time an unintended collision with the moon has been identified.

In the past, rockets were launched at the star for scientific purposes.

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