SpaceX has made a name for itself with space-bound rockets that can return themselves to Earth after launch to be reused. But not every piece of the rocket makes that return journey. While the first-stage booster of its Falcon 9 rocket is reusable, the second-stage booster, at least for the time being, is supposed to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere once it has done its job.
Unfortunately, that didn’t exactly go as planned during a 2015 launch. When a Falcon 9 was used at the time to send the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Deep Space Climate Observatory into a distant orbit, the second-stage booster didn’t have enough fuel to get it back into the atmosphere. Instead, it entered a chaotic orbit around the planet, where it has been ever since.
But not for much longer. According to sky-watcher Bill Gray, this piece of space junk is now on a collision course with none other than the moon. Gray creates software that tracks objects near the Earth, and he says he’s almost 100 percent confident in his findings. “I have a fairly complete mathematical model of what the Earth, moon, sun and planets are doing and how their gravity is affecting the object. I have a rough idea of how much sunlight is pushing outward on the object, gently pushing it away from the sun. This usually enables me to make predictions with a good bit of confidence,” he said. The collision is estimated to occur on March 4 on the far side of the moon.
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