An unknown missile hit the moon and formed two craters

Astronomers have finally discovered the impact of a mysterious rocket that hit the moon more than three months ago.

Since the beginning of 2022, experts have known that this rocket was to hit the moon on March 4. They calculated that the impact should have occurred in a crater called Hertzsprung, which is 570 kilometers wide.

They were right: Researchers from the NASA Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission announced on June 23 that they had discovered two craters, a fact that is very rare.

One is about 59 feet (18 m) wide while the other is about 52 feet (16 m) in diameter, the website reports. Space.com.

“The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the rocket body had significant masses at both ends,” wrote Mark Robinson of Arizona State University, principal investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC).

The origin of the missile remains a mystery. Early speculation suggests that it will likely be the upper stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the Deep Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission for NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in February 2015.

Additional observations and calculations changed this assumption, leading many scientists to conclude that the rocket body was most likely part of the Long March 3 booster that launched the Chinese Chang’e 5T1 mission around the moon in October 2014. This claim has been denied by China.

Rocket bodies have already crashed onto the lunar surface; For example, NASA directed the third stages of Saturn 5 rockets to the Moon several times during the Apollo program.

But these were intended effects. The March 4th impact is the first unintended human-made impact to hit our satellite.