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Orbiting debris will strike the Moon’s surface with impressive speed.
There is a lot of junk floating around in space, from derelict satellites to cast-off rocket components. Most of this debris is either floating aimlessly in the vacuum or gradually orbiting around the Earth in a sort of invisible trash ring. This week, a piece of that trash ring is slated to break loose and become promptly acquainted with the surface of the Moon.
According to one Bill Gray, an independent orbital dynamics researcher, a piece of an old rocket booster that’s been orbiting the Earth for several years will be breaking that orbit tomorrow morning, with the gravitational force behind it causing it to slingshot into the surface of the Moon at approximately 5,500 miles per hour. This will be occurring on the dark side of the moon, so we won’t be able to see it, but if we could, it would be quite the spectacle.
“If it were observable – which, sadly, it won’t be – you would see a big flash, and dust and disintegrated rocket bits and pebbles and boulders thrown out, some of it for hundreds of kilometers,” Gray told CNN.
NASA has corroborated Gray’s projections and are interested in the potential challenge of tracking the booster’s precise point of impact by utilizing their Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
A rocket part that's been careering around space for years is set to collide with the moon on Friday, and it will be the first time a chunk of space junk has unintentionally slammed into the lunar surface https://t.co/ga1etHQVmv
— CNN (@CNN) March 2, 2022
“This unique event presents an exciting research opportunity,” a NASA spokesperson told CNN.
“Following the impact, the mission can use its cameras to identify the impact site, comparing older images to images taken after the impact. The search for the impact crater will be challenging and might take weeks to months.”
