Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk-owned SpaceX’s stray Falcon 9 booster is headed on a collision course with the moon, The Washington Post reported, citing an independent space researcher in orbital dynamics.
What Happened: The booster, which was launched in 2015 as part of a mission to send a space weather satellite on a million-mile journey, is expected to collide with the moon in March this year.
The rocket is set to crash into the far side of the moon.
The collision will probably go unobserved from Earth and likely to result in a fresh lunar crater, as per the researcher Bill Gray, who first discovered the rocket’s course and alerted other observers for confirmation.
Gray has tracked space junk, asteroids and objects near Earth for about 25 years, the report noted.
This could be the “first unintentional case” of space junk, as per Gray.
Why It Matters: Musk dreams of colonizing Mars and founded SpaceX with the mission to make humanity multiplanetary. He has in the past said he remains “highly confident” that SpaceX would land humans on Mars by 2026.
Musk had in July said SpaceX is developing a fully-reusable Starship that can deliver a payload of around 150 tonnes to low Earth Orbit and about 250 tonnes when expendable.
SpaceX aims for Starship to replace its existing rockets — Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon 2 — and be able to carry much more mass into orbit.
Photo: Courtesy of SpaceX via Flickr
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