Rocket To Smash Into Moon Belongs To China, Not Elon Musk

A rogue rocket expected to collide with the moon on March 4 was wrongly identified as a SpaceX Falcon rocket stage and, instead, is likely from a past Chinese lunar mission, according to NASA, Katie Hunt and Ashley Strickland reported for CNN.

Photo Insert: The impact site of Apollo 16’s S-IVB Booster, taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2015

The object now on target to hit the moon was first made public by Bill Gray, an independent researcher focused on orbital dynamics and the developer of astronomical software.

He identified it in 2015 as the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon rocket, used that same year to launch the US Deep Space Climate Observatory or DSCOVR. The object, initially called WE0913A by asteroid spotters, had gone past the moon two days after DSCOVR's launch, he said.

Over the weekend, however, Gray said he had gotten the object's origins wrong after communicating with Jon Giorgini of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which doesn't track space junk but does keep careful track of a lot of active spacecraft, including DSCOVR.

"Jon pointed out that JPL's Horizons system showed that the DSCOVR spacecraft's trajectory did not go particularly close to the moon. It would be a little strange if the second stage went right past the moon, while DSCOVR was in another part of the sky. There's always some separation, but this was suspiciously large," Gray said.

"Analysis led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies indicates the object expected to impact the far side of the Moon March 4 is likely the Chinese Chang'e 5-T1 booster launched in 2014," according to NASA.

"It is not a SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage from a mission in 2015 as previously reported. This update is based on analysis of the object's orbits in the 2016 -- 2017 timeframe."

Gray said he reviewed his data and has now landed on a different explanation: The object was the third stage of the Chinese Long March 3C rocket used to launch a lunar orbiter in 2014. The rocket stage is expected to hit the moon at 7:26 a.m. ET on March 4. The impact will be on the far side of the moon and not visible from Earth.

The rocket will disintegrate on impact and create a crater about 10 to 20 meters (32.8 feet to 65.6 feet) across.

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