Washington, Feb 15 (Agency) A rocket expected to crash into the moon on March 4 was wrongly identified as a SpaceX Falcon rocket stage and, instead, is likely from a past Chinese lunar mission. Last month, Bill Gray, developer of Project Pluto, a suite of astronomical software used to calculate the orbits of asteroids and comets, identified that the rocket to crash on the Moon was the upper-stage of an old SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite in 2015, reports CNN.
His assessment was widely accepted by other space experts and NASA, which said it was monitoring the rocket’s trajectory. The rocket is now said to be 2014-065B, the booster for the Chang’e 5-T1 lunar mission, launched in 2014. Admitting the mistake, Gray in a new blog post said: “We now have good evidence that it is actually 2014-065B, the booster for the Chang’e 5-T1 lunar mission. It will, however, still hit the moon within a few kilometers of the predicted spot on March 4, 2022 at 12:25 UTC, within a few seconds of the predicted time. “The preceding candidate launch was the Chang’e 5-T1 mission, launched at 18:00 UTC on October 23, 2014. Its booster was (we thought) never seen,” he added.
Identifying space junk is “never easy” in deep-space orbit, Gray’s new identification was likely right. “I’d give at least 80 per cent and maybe 90 per cent odds,” said astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who advocates for greater regulation of space waste. “It’s especially hard for these things in chaotic deep space orbits where you pick something up several years after it was last seen and try and backtrack it to match it with a known mission,” he added.