You may be a little indignant about it…

After floating in space for seven years, an old staircase from a Falcon 9 rocket will crash into the moon on Friday, March 4. This is the conclusion reached by data analyst Bill Gray. It’s a real first. Because never before has the moon been inadvertently bombarded with dumped space debris.

Falcon 9 rocket

The Falcon 9 rocket from the American company SpaceX was launched in 2015 and put a weather satellite into orbit. The intention was that the second stage of the rocket would then return to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. However, due to a problem, the rocket stage failed to do so. And so it has been tumbling around in space for seven years now.

Moon

The story now has a tail. Because Gray’s calculations show that the old rocket stage has unexpectedly come to lie on a collision course with the moon. The space debris, which weighs about 4 tons and is hurtling through space at 2.5 kilometers per second, is expected to ram our natural satellite on March 4. “The impact will take place on the far side of the moon, in the great ancient crater Hertzsprung,” Gray writes.

The green cross indicates the expected site of impact. Image: Bill Gray

How often does junk hit the moon? “This is the first unintended case I’m aware of,” Gray says. The event is therefore a true first. While junk from lunar missions has hit the lunar surface before—sometimes even intentionally, such as during the LCROSS mission—this is the first time anything not explicitly aimed at our natural satellite will crash there.

To care

By the way, you don’t have to worry about the impact. Because from a safety point of view, not much can happen, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell assures us. The moon is even hit fairly often by larger objects.

space debris

You may be a little outraged about it. That’s because the universe should really be a waste-free place. But the opposite is unfortunately true. It is estimated that hundreds of tons of garbage are circling the earth. Think of broken and discarded satellites, but also of (tiny) debris from satellites that have collided with each other. Researchers have been expressing concern about this troubling state of affairs for some time now. This is partly because space debris even occasionally poses a threat to the manned ISS. The fact that there is now also an old rocket stage on a collision course with the moon underlines once again to what extent we are polluting the space around the earth – up to the moon.

Gray plans to keep a close eye on the old rocket stage. In early February, the data analyst hopes to refine the trajectory of the rocket stage based on newly collected data. “The true effects of sunlight are difficult to predict perfectly,” he writes. “It doesn’t just push out, some of it bounces ‘sideways’. The object is a long cylinder that rotates slowly. It is possible that the impact will deviate from my prediction by a few kilometers and a few seconds. We will know more at the beginning of February.”