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Astronomy experts say they initially misunderstood the secrets of the night sky last month: it turns out that the rocket that is expected to hit the Moon in early March was built by China, not SpaceX.
A rocket is expected to actually land on the surface of the Earth’s only natural satellite on March 4, but contrary to what was warned, it was not built by Elon Musk’s company.
Now, it turns out that the 2014-065B rocket was manufactured by Beijing as a booster for the Chang’e 5-T1, launched in 2014 as part of the Chinese space agency’s lunar exploration program. The surprise announcement was made by astronomer Bill Gray, who was the first to predict the impact but acknowledged his mistake regarding identifying the rocket.
“This (honest mistake) simply highlights the problem with the lack of proper tracking of these deep-space objects,” wrote on Twitter his colleague Jonathan McDowell, an expert who strongly supports the idea that there seem to be stronger rules. in terms of space debris control. “The object had approximately the brightness we would expect, and was moving in a reasonable orbit,” the post said.
But “in retrospect, we should have noticed some strange things” about his orbit, he added. NASA said in late January that it would try to observe the crater that would form from the object’s explosion, thanks to its probe orbiting the Moon, the Lunar Detection Orbiter (LRO). According to the agency, this event really offers an “exciting research opportunity”.
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