{"id":557,"date":"2022-03-02T15:25:21","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T15:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/03\/02\/a-spacex-rocket-slamming-into-the-moon-is-a-reminder-to-clean-up-our-deep-space-junk\/"},"modified":"2022-03-02T15:25:21","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T15:25:21","slug":"a-spacex-rocket-slamming-into-the-moon-is-a-reminder-to-clean-up-our-deep-space-junk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/03\/02\/a-spacex-rocket-slamming-into-the-moon-is-a-reminder-to-clean-up-our-deep-space-junk\/","title":{"rendered":"A SpaceX rocket slamming into the Moon is a reminder to clean up our deep space junk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/1\/27\/22904427\/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-second-stage-moon-collision-deep-space-junk<\/a>
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Update February 13th, 12PM ET: <\/strong><\/em>The astronomer who originally predicted that this object would hit the Moon, Bill Gray, <\/em>updated his prediction on February 12th<\/em><\/a>, arguing that the vehicle is probably not a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket after all. Instead, he now thinks the object is a leftover piece of a Chinese rocket. <\/em>The Verge wrote a new story about this update, <\/em>which you can read here<\/em><\/a>. We\u2019ve kept the original story below, as most of the information still stands, just with a different kind of rocket.<\/em><\/p>\n

For the last seven years, a leftover piece of an old SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has been circling the Earth on a very wide orbit, having a pretty unremarkable time. But that\u2019s all about to change on March 4th, when this rocket piece is predicted to accidentally slam into the far side of the Moon. And according to the astronomer who first figured this out, it\u2019s a reminder that we need to take better care of our deep space junk.<\/p>\n

The doomed component is part of a rocket that launched from Florida in February of 2015<\/a>. The vehicle lofted a particularly valuable satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called DSCOVR, which monitors solar winds coming from the Sun to better predict space weather. In order to perform its job properly, DSCOVR was designed to go to a very distant orbit roughly 1 million miles from Earth. And to get the satellite out there, part of SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 \u2014 the upper stage or second stage on top of the rocket \u2014 lofted the vehicle up to an incredibly high altitude above Earth. Once the satellite was deployed, the upper stage was abandoned and left in its extremely high and elliptical path around the planet.<\/p>\n

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