Details still up in the air, unlike whatever hit our natural satellite
A chunk of Chinese space junk today crashed into the far side of the Moon, according to a maker of astrometry software. The trash is believed to be a spent Long March 3C rocket booster from the launch of Chang’e 5-T1, a Chinese experimental robotic spacecraft that lifted off in 2014. The leftover component was estimated to have smashed into the Moon at 1225 UTC on Friday, after hurtling through space at 5,800 miles per hour. We’re not sure of the timing because debris at such altitudes isn’t usually tracked by agencies, such as the US Space Force, according to Planetary Society member Bill Gray, who develops software for professional astronomers and first predicted the impact. Gray said he started tracking the debris in his spare time after an astronomer at NASA alerted him a few weeks ago to something that seemed, in Gray’s words, „suspiciously large.“ The collision probably created a crater on the Moon, though it’ll be tricky to confirm this since there aren’t many instruments covering the natural satellite’s far side.
