Surprisingly, the LRO images, taken on May 25, revealed that the impact crater, which was formed by the impact of the missile, is in fact two craters, an eastern crater (18 meters in diameter) superimposed on a western crater (16 meters in diameter), which constitutes a new mystery. for astronomers to detect it.
The double crater was unexpected and might indicate that the missile body had large masses at each end.
Mark Robinson, Principal Investigator on the LRO Camera Team, explained: “The spent rocket mass is usually concentrated at the end of the engine, and the rest of the rocket stage consists primarily of an empty fuel tank. As the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the dual nature of the crater may help in its identification. “.
Since the origin of the missile body remains uncertain, the dual nature of the crater may indicate its identity.
No other rocket object on the Moon produced double craters. Apollo SIV-B produced four craters, but none were double craters, rather they were somewhat irregular in outline, and were much larger than each of the newly discovered double craters.
Astronomer Bill Gray, who first discovered the uncontrollable object in space and predicted it would hit the moon, explains that the booster “came about 15 degrees from vertical. So that’s not the explanation.”
The unidentified rocket first caught the attention of astronomers earlier this year when it was identified as the upper stage of a SpaceX rocket, which launched NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) to Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange Point. ) in 2015.
Gray, who designs software that tracks space debris, reported the object on January 26, likely belonging to “SpaceX”, but a few weeks later, he received an email from John Giorgini at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), indicating that the path of DSCOVR should not take the booster anywhere near the moon.
In an attempt to reconcile conflicting paths, Gray began looking back at his data, discovering that he had misidentified the out-of-control object and that SpaceX was not the culprit.
A little investigative work led Gray to determine that the object was in fact the upper stage of China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission, a 2014 technology demonstration mission that laid the groundwork for Chang’e 5, which successfully returned a lunar sample to Earth in 2020.
Jonathan McDowell has provided some supporting evidence that appears to support this new theory of object identity.
A few days later, the Chinese foreign minister confirmed that this object was not from the Chang’e 5-T1 mission booster, which derailed and crashed into the ocean shortly after launch.
As it stands now, Gray remains convinced that it was the Change 5-T1 booster that hit the moon, suggesting that the Secretary of State made a mistake in confusing the Chang’e 5-T1 with the similarly named Chang’e 5, whose booster actually sank in the ocean.
As for the new double crater on the moon, the fact that the LRO team was able to find the impact site so quickly is an impressive feat in itself, because it was discovered just months after the collision, with a little help from Gray and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which both performed independently. Narrowing the search area to a few tens of kilometers.
For comparison, it took more than six years of careful searching to find the site of the Apollo 16 impact – S-IVB.