After initially saying it was a spent Elon Musk SpaceX rocket, an expert now says a Chinese rocket will crash into the moon in a historic first.
Bill Gray, an astronomer and the developer of the asteroid tracking software Project Pluto, initially identified the flying space junk as the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket.
But now Gray says that the large object about to smash into the moon at roughly 9,300km/h (almost 5,800 mph) on March 4 is the booster of a Communist Chinese Long March 3C rocket.
The space junk comes from China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission launched in October 2014 on a Long March 3C rocket.
Gray says the rocket should hit the moon in the Hertzsprung crater, on the far side of the moon. This is the first time that human-created space junk will unintentionally strike the surface of the moon. ADN
Paul Crespo
Paul Crespo is the Managing Editor of American Defense News. A defense and national security expert, he served as a Marine Corps officer and as a military attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at US embassies worldwide. Paul holds degrees from Georgetown, London, and Cambridge Universities. He is also CEO of SPECTRE Global Risk, a security advisory firm, and President of the Center for American Defense Studies, a national security think tank. - paulcrespo.substack.com - PAULCRESPO.COM