In March, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will hit the moon, but is that as scary as it sounds?
So there is this SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that's been floating around space for a minute. To be exact, it's been floating around for 7 years, and now it is on track to collide with the moon. Does that mean, life on Earth will change forever, and Elon Musk is to blame? Unlikely, but read on.
Falcon 9 Rocket Will Collide With Moon
So this rocket was launched in February 2015, carrying some complicated monitors to, well, monitor solar wind and other space weather. As one does. This all went according to plan, but the rocket's upper stage didn't have enough juice to make it back to Earth, and it's been floating around space ever since.
Now, it's been calculated that on March 4, this rocket will collide with the moon at around 5600 mph. The impact will happen on the far side of the moon, and will likely not have any effect other than leaving a crater that might be useful for lunar geology. Here's what Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist from Harvard had to say about this:
This is the first time that something not explicitly targeted at the Moon has been noticed to accidentally hit it, but that's mainly because we weren't paying attention until recently. There are about 30 to 50 lost deep space objects like this that have been missing for years - 50 years in some cases - that haven't been picked up by asteroid searches, and probably some of them hit the moon.
So, at the end of the day it's all less exciting than it sounds, but... better this way than, I don't know, losing the moon. I guess. We'll leave the escalation to Hollywood. I'm sure The Rock is willing to star in it.