Culture
Rocket set to crash into the Moon is not from SpaceX but ‘built by China,’ says astronaut
The Wolf Moon, the first full moon of the year, rises behind an apartment building in Bangkok on January 17, 2022
A part of a rocket that is expected to crash into the Moon in March may be a booster from a Chinese launch and not from a spacecraft belonging to Elon Musk’s SpaceX as previously thought, an astronomer has said.
In January, the astronomer Bill Gray said in his blog Project Pluto that a booster that had been floating around for seven years from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was likely to hit the Moon.
However, last week he updated his blog post to say evidence now shows that the object was actually a rocket booster from China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission, which launched in 2014.
