Chinese rocket strikes far side of the Moon; expected to create 20-metre-wide crater

abandoned rocket part, which was on a collision course with Moon, crashed into lunar surface on March 4. collision occurred at 5:55 pm (IST) in Hertzsprung Crater, which is on far side of moon. According to German Aerospace Center (DLR), rocket weighs approximately 4 tonnes and crashed into Moon at a speed of 9,300 kilometres per hour. Interestingly, this has marked first instance when a "piece of terrestrial technology unintentionally collided with anor celestial body", says DLR.

Prior to collision, agency even shared a picture showing site where rocket will crash. astronomers h predicted that location would be  Hertzsprung Crater, which is 500 kilometres across, and rocket would create a crater of its own not larger than 20 metres on norrn rim of Hertzprung. DLR assured that today's crash poses no threat to Earth and that Moon has endured far more serious collisions in past. 

Who owns rogue rocket?

While initially rogue rocket was believed to be a part of SpaceX's Falcon 9, ory later shifted to Long March 3C rocket which was launched by China in 2014. However, its origin has not been clear as China rejected reports about ownership.  Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin h said in his statement, "According to China’s monitoring, upper stage of Chang'e 5-T1 mission has fallen through Earth’s atmosphere in a safe manner and burnt up completely". Asteroid tracker Bill Gray on or hand, who first spotted rocket piece said, "I'm 99.9% sure it's China 5-T1", BBC reported ding that China must have mixed up two different rocket parts.

Gray h first identified massive space debris as SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster, which was launched in 2015 to send  NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory to Lagrange point. expert initially said that  rocket became derelict as it did not have enough fuel to return to Earth's atmosphere and got stuck between gravitational influence of Earth-moon system.

Image: Twitter/@DLR_en