A Chinese rocket, or rather, what was left of it, just crashed on the moon. The impact occurred in the crater Ejnar Hertzsprung of 536 meters in diameter, located in the hidden part of the satellite, the one that we do not see from the Earth, to understand us. The crash should have happened at one speed equal to 9 thousand kilometers per hourand is estimated to have left a huge new crater on the lunar surface.
Chinese rocket crashes on the moon
The discovery of this rocket dates back to last January 21, when the astronomer Bill Gray identified the object by cataloging it as the first accidental lunar crash with an artificial celestial body launched into orbit by man. The crash itself, in addition to the crater, did not cause any damage to our satellite, on the other hand man has been launching probes and similar objects into space and on the Moon for years.
Anyway, this rocket would be the third stage of the Chinese rocket that had launched the Chang’e-5 T1 probewhich left China in 2014, or so it is thought, given that it is still a controversy over the actual identity of the object in question, given the limited data available to us.
If it were actually a part of the Chinese rocket, it would be a confirmation that the fragment of the device had not disintegrated upon contact with the atmosphere, as had been stated at first but, on the contrary, was still in circulation in the surrounding space. to the Earth.
As we have already anticipated, from the terrestrial observation points it was not possible to follow the impact on the Moon, since it took place on the hidden side of the stassa. However, a first branch of collision data was provided to us by the spacecraft Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of NASA, currently in orbit around the satellite and intent on collecting the effects of the crash by measuring the resulting cloud.