3/16/2023 0 Comments What happend to the moon march 4![]() ![]() Reddy’s group has catalogued nearly 200 objects drifting about in “cislunar space” between the Earth and the moon. Despite hopes for their survival, many scientists suspect they were turned to mush. ![]() Three years ago, the Israeli Beresheet probe crashed on the surface scattering thousands of tiny tardigrades. ![]() In 1999, a private lunar mission sent the ashes of the astrogeologist Eugene Shoemaker into a “crater of eternal darkness” near the moon’s south pole. Junk left behind by the US astronauts has since been joined by more curious material. But the lunar surface also bears the scars of rocket stages that were crashed intentionally, and moon missions that bit the dust rather than settled on it.ĭuring the Apollo era, huge Saturn V rocket bodies were steered into the surface so that instruments placed on the surface could monitor the resulting shock waves for analysis of the moon’s interior. China’s Chang’e 4 lander, which landed on the far side of the moon in 2019, is too far away to witness the spectacle.Ī natural battering from meteorites has left the moon pocked with half a billion craters the same size or larger than the one the booster will make. “This is an impact of a rocket body that is unintentional.”Īstronomers will not get to observe the impact directly, but scientists hope that images of the crash site can be taken soon after by Nasa’s lunar reconnaissance orbiter or India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, both of which are circling the moon. “Things have hit the moon in the past, but those were primarily deliberate impacts, or we tried to land and crashed on the surface,” Reddy said. Dr Vishnu Reddy, an associate professor at the University of Arizona whose team helped to identify the object, said it highlights how space junk now extends beyond Earth, where the US already tracks more than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |