Elon Musk It hasn’t been lighthearted lately – Tesla has been causing him new problems on a regular basis, The astronomers decided to “declare war on him.” Regarding the cosmic internet starlinkAnd then it turned out that a Falcon 9 missile was on it Of course a collision with the moonSo there was reason to accuse him of dumping trash on the surface of our natural satellite.
We are talking about a rocket that participated in the 2015 launch of the Deep Space Climate Observatory.DSCOVR). The instrument was placed 1.5 million kilometers from Earth at the Lagrangian point (L1) between the Earth and the Sun. The observatory was launched near geostationary orbit, so part of the rocket Falcon 9 She can no longer return to Earth and has been in space for 7 years.
According to calculations made by an astronomer a few weeks ago Bill Gray Using Project Pluto, it was scheduled to hit the lunar surface on March 4, transporting about 4 tons of garbage there. However, as we are only learning, the impact may and will happen, but it is likely that the rocket on this collision path belongs to the Chinese Space Agency, not SpaceX.
As he told the astronomer, he was asked to review the accounts provided by a letter from John Giorgini NASA’s Jet Propulsion LaboratoryThis indicates that the trajectory of the alleged Falcon 9 rocket does not match the DSCOVR site. He also noted that it is very unlikely that Falcon 9 will fly through it the moon Just two days after the launch of the observatory, which was an important assumption in Gray’s calculations, historical data confirmed that the SpaceX rocket was in fact in a completely different part of space at the time.
This means that we are talking about a completely different object, which, after further analysis, turns out to be the rank of a Chinese missile The Long Walk 3Cused during a space mission launch Chang’e 5-T1was launched on October 23, 2014 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.
Reconstructing her journey shows that she’s definitely a more likely candidate, especially that Orbital elements of the rocket (parameters that clearly determine the Kepler orbit of a particular object) are consistent with those of the CubeSat amateur radio, which went on a flight with Chang’e 5-T1.
And while Bill Gray admitted his mistake, he also noted that this situation is a great example of how little we know about objects sent into space that will actually do their job, and we should pay more attention to them and perhaps even create a special item. A system in which their last known location can be reported.
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