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Elon Musk SpaceX rocket on collision course with moon.

Elon Musk SpaceX rocket on collision course with moon

By Georgina Rannard, BBC News, 28 Jan 22,   A rocket launched by Elon Musk’s space exploration company is on course to crash into the Moon and explode.

The Falcon 9 booster was launched in 2015 but after completing its mission, it did not have enough fuel to return towards Earth and instead remained in space.

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell told BBC News it will be the first known uncontrolled rocket collision with the Moon……..

It was part of Mr Musk’s space exploration programme SpaceX, a commercial company that ultimately aims to get humans living on other planets.

Since 2015 the rocket has been pulled by different gravitational forces of the Earth, Moon and Sun, making its path somewhat “chaotic”, explains Prof McDowell from the US-based Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“It’s been dead – just following the laws of gravity.”

It’s joined millions of other pieces of space junk – machinery discarded in space after completing missions without enough energy to return to Earth.

“Over the decades there have been maybe 50 large objects that we’ve totally lost track of. This may have happened a bunch of times before, we just didn’t notice. This would be the first confirmed case,” Prof McDowell says…………………. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60148543

January 29, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA