{"id":22316,"date":"2022-01-26T00:30:29","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T16:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/a-spacex-rocket-stage-is-about-to-crash-into-the-moon\/"},"modified":"2022-01-26T00:30:29","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T16:30:29","slug":"a-spacex-rocket-stage-is-about-to-crash-into-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/a-spacex-rocket-stage-is-about-to-crash-into-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"A SpaceX rocket stage is about to crash into the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket launching DSCOVR for NOAA, NASA, and the US Air Force. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This meant DSCOVR\u2019s spent stage was stuck orbiting around the Earth and Moon for the past seven years. Unfortunately, there are not many stable orbits around the Earth and the Moon. The Moon does a pretty good job slinging unwanted debris out around the Sun or crashing into itself. This final option will be the fate of the spent SpaceX stage.<\/p>\n

When will SpaceX\u2019s second stage crash into the Moon?<\/h2>\n

According to Bill Gray and a team of observers collecting extra data, SpaceX\u2019s second stage is expected to crash into the Moon on March 4, as first reported by Ars Technica.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a perfect prediction \u2013 the object is tumbling, and while it\u2019s well understood how the Earth, Moon, and Sun\u2019s gravity will affect it, the projections of the light hitting it (which can affect orbits in space) are less understood. Gray writes, \u201cthese unpredictable effects are very<\/em> small. But they will accumulate between now and 2022 March 4.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does this mean for orbiting Moon missions<\/h2>\n

Luckily, only a handful of missions orbit the Moon, so a collision is improbable. However, this will be a rare occurrence for missions like NASA\u2019s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to study the effects of a lunar impact.<\/p>\n

Many mission\u2019s spent stages have been used to impact the Moon in the past. Most notably during Apollo, NASA would impact both the S-IVB (Saturn V third stage) and Lunar Module\u2019s ascent stage into the surface. Then seismometers would record the \u201cmoonquakes\u201d that would occur.<\/p>\n

<\/ins><\/p>\n

In a response to Space Explored<\/em>, NASA\u2019s LRO team said they will not be in place to observe the impact but they will attempt to locate the creator once overhead. More observations will be needed to fine-tune the time and location of impact, hopefully, observations can be made from ground-based observatories.<\/p>\n

Enjoy reading Space Explored?<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket launching DSCOVR for NOAA, NASA, and the US Air Force. Credit: SpaceX This meant DSCOVR\u2019s spent stage was stuck orbiting around the Earth and Moon for the past seven years. Unfortunately, there are not many stable orbits around the Earth and the Moon. The Moon does a pretty good job […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}