Researchers at the University of Arizona have just released a paper this month claiming that the uppermost stage of the Chinese Long March 3C rocket crashed onto the moon’s far side on March 4th, 2022, leaving a double crater 95 feet wide (29 meters) on the surface.
Reportedly, the crash wasn’t a surprise, as astronomers had been following the rocket’s trajectory for weeks. Previously, however, there was considerable debate about the origins of the rocket itself.
Originally, astronomers speculated that the impact might have been caused by part of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket that launched a satellite in February 2015 to observe the Earth.
But the sheer size of the crater led the researchers to discount a crash by the third stage of the Space X. How it was moving and what it was made of, forced researchers to change tact.
“In this paper, we present a trajectory and spectroscopic analysis using ground-based telescope observations to show conclusively that WEO913A is the Long March 3C rocket body from the Chang’e 5‑T1 mission,” the researchers, led by Tanner Campbell, a doctoral student in the University of Arizona’s Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, wrote in a study that came out on November 16th in the Planetary Science Journal.
Astronomers were expecting the object to wobble through space, given the forces from the moon’s gravity and the light from the sun, yet this object tumbled end over end in a stable manner.
This has led to conjecture that the mass might have been made up of the upper stage’s engines which weighed 1,090 kilograms, as it created a double crater upon impact, the first time that had ever been seen on the moon. “We know that in the case of Chang’e 5 T1, its impact was almost straight down and to get those two craters of about the same size, you need two roughly equal masses that are apart from each other,” says Campbell.
Last year, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin denied that the Long March rocket had struck the moon, claiming that internal monitoring showed the upper stage of the Chang’e‑5 rocket had burned up upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
But observers, including U.S. Space Command, believe Wang confused the Chang’e‑5 mission, intended to bring lunar samples to Earth, with the earlier Chang’e‑5 T‑1 test mission which is thought to have caused the impact. So far, China has not responded to the latest study.
The paper also emphasizes that their conclusions showcase the growing need to keep track of old space hardware after it has served its purpose.
