In March 2022, A mysterious rocket collided with the far side of the Moon.
The collision generated a 29-meter double crater near Hertzprung craterand unleashed various speculations about its origin
The rocket, apparently without an owner, was initially linked to SpaceX.
But although the first analyzes pointed to Elon Musk’s company, specifically to his Falcon 9 of the DSCOVR mission (launched in 2015), now there is a new hypothesis of who collided with the natural satellite.
Who crashed the Moon?
The enigmatic rocket, known as WE0913Awas detected by the Catalina Sky Survey in 2015, triggering debates about its true identity.
Despite early speculation pointing to a SpaceX Falcon 9, researchers, led by Tanner Campbell of the University of Arizona, recently concluded that The object would belong to China.
That’s right: the research team, after an important analysis, concluded that it would be the third stage of a Long March 3C, part of the Chang’e 5-T1 mission launched by China in 2014.
China behind the problematic rocket
In the recent study, scientists They meticulously compared the object’s brightness behavior over time with thousands of hypothetical space objects.
This analysis published in the magazine Planetary Science Dayhe provided key information about rocket stabilityrevealing that it would have a configuration similar to a gym dumbbell with two considerable masses at the ends.
This structure would explain the double crater generated on the Moon.
Campbell further suggested that the second mass, located at the opposite end of the engines, pcould be a support structure or a type of additional instrumentation.
Despite this illuminating study, unknowns still remain about the second mass of the rocket.
For now, this research leaves open some unknowns about the exact function of the additional structure in the Chinese rocket that found its destination on our natural satellite, but the important thing is that it proposes a new perspective on the history behind this controversial lunar event.
