Hitting The Moon

"I realized that my software complained because it couldn't project the orbit past March 4. And it couldn't do it because the rocket had hit the moon."

"[This may constitute] the first unintentional case [of space junk hitting the moon, a crash that would create a new crater, but not do significant damage to the moon as it's] built to take this sort of abuse."

"When a couple of them [astronomers] sent in their results, they confirmed the initial data and made the actual impact time and location considerably more certain."

Bill Gray, researcher in orbital dynamics

Photo taken of a view of the moon from Cannes, southern France.

"As more players get into deep space, we need to have more attention paid to the junk that we're leaving out there."

"It's not as much about what SpaceX does now because it's a perfectly standard practice to leave your junk in deep Earth orbit and just abandon it."

"It's a big space out there, and if something ends up hitting the moon or ends up re-entering the Earth's atmosphere or going into orbit around the sun, the attitude has kind of been, 'So be it'. That may change as we get busier on the moon."

"Deep-space junk is by no means a threat or a crisis at the moment, but it is something that we're in the early stages [of] now."

"This SpaceX case is a marker that deep space is just starting to get busier, and it's time to start thinking about our policies for deep space."

Jonathan McDowell, astronomer, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

"For launches of spacecraft intended to orbit the Earth, the best practice is to reserve enough fuel in a rocket's upper stage to return it to Earth's atmosphere, where it will burn up."

"This is what SpaceX and most Western rocket companies customarily do to help control debris in low Earth orbit."

"The moon, of course, has no atmosphere for the stage to burn up in."

"[The rocket also] lacked the energy to escape the gravity of the Earth-Moon system [resulting in the booster's chaotic orbit for close to seven years]."

Eric Berger, meteorologist, Ars Technica

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in 2015   Getty Images

Tracking the orbit of the SpaceX rocket with his Project Pluto astronomical software designed to provide commercial and freeware data research to both professional and amateur astronomers, the meteorologist, Bill Gray was puzzled when he received an unexpected reading on the Falcon 9 booster launched in 2015, part of a mission for a space weather satellite to be sent on a million-mile trip. The second stage of the rocket has been hurtling haphazardly through space for years.

And then he realized why it was that he was unable to obtain readings on the booster from his software since early March, as he finally understood that the SpaceX rocket is veering off on a collision course with the moon. He posted his finding on his blog post and since then other space observers confirmed the data to be correct, agreeing that the rocket, which weighs in at about four tonnes, is on a course to crash into the far side of the moon by March.

Some astronomers think of this news as "not a big deal", albeit interesting. What the situation does highlight is the potential for increasing numbers of such occurrences rising out of space junk floating about in deep space. The first interplanetary mission was launched by SpaceX in February of 2015 from Cape Canaveral, Florida where the Falcon 9 travelled a million miles in assisting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Deep Space Climate Observatory to begin its journey to Lagrange Point 2, a gravitationally stable solar orbit on the far side of the sun to Earth.

SpaceX's 50th Falcon 9 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as the moon looks on, March 6, 2018.  Getty

What went against expectations to see the rocket's second stage reaching a transfer orbit and a long burn, was that the booster was absent sufficient fuel to return to Earth because it was so high in its orbit to enable it to return to Earth's atmosphere. Instead it was caught in the Earth-Moon system of gravity, resulting in its chaotic orbit for close to seven years. Meteorologist Gray felt that such a chaotic orbit could result in three possibilities: hitting the moon; hitting Earth; or picking up enough energy to zoom past the moon and propelled toward the sun.

When, on January 14 he realized the rocket could be expected to crash into the moon, Dr.Gray contacted a group of astronomers for verification of his data. Space junk is beginning to pose a real threat to space travel and to the uninterrupted operation of weather and communication satellites. NASA tracks roughly 20,000 pieces of space junk, mostly old and broken satellites. A spacewalk was abruptly called off in November following notification that space junk threatened astronaut activity outside the International Space Station after Russia fired a missile destroying a dead satellite, sending over 1,500 pieces of debris into low Earth orbit.

In April 20198, the lunar lander Beresheet by Israel Aerospace Industries was the first private spacecraft to land on the moon, by crashing. As it did, the lunar lander spilled thousands of tardigrades -- microscopic creatures known also as 'water bears' regarded as the toughest animals on the planet -- onto the moon's surface.

Tardigrade, American Scientist