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

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

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

Who owns the rogue rocket?

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

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

Image: Twitter/@DLR_en