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It may not be a rocket launch scheduled to hit the moon on March 4 SpaceX After all.
The astronomer responsible for detecting the impending collision, Bill Gray, announced on Saturday (February 12) that he made a mistake in identifying the rocket as an old stage of the Falcon 9 rocket he assisted. The launch of the Climate Observatory satellite into deep space in 2015.
Alternatively, Gray notes, the stage could have been part of the Long March 3C rocket that launched a rocket from the Moon to China. Chang’e 5-T1 mission In October 2014. This spacecraft was a pioneer in change 5The 2020 mission that returned an automated sample to the Moon.)
gray races Project Pluto Software used to track and position near-Earth objects Correction Notice on its website on Saturday (February 12) after receiving a note from John Giorgini, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“he [Giorgini] He wrote to Gray on Saturday morning explaining that the DSCOVR spacecraft’s trajectory did not come particularly close to the Moon, and so it would be a bit strange for a second phase of the Moon to come close,” Eric Berger wrote in Ars TechnicaWho reported backup strayed three weeks ago on Saturday.
Video: The stage of the rocket’s arrival to the moon as seen by the virtual telescope project
The rocket stage is still scheduled to start regardless of its origin Hit the other side of the moon On March 4, at 7:25 AM EDT (1225 GMT), it will not be visible from Earth. However, Gray explained on his website why he believed he had made an identification error.
“Based on John’s email, I scanned my email files to remind myself why I originally identified the item as a DSCOVR stage seven years ago. I did this excavation with complete confidence that it would prove that the object was, in fact, a DSCOVR stage two,” gray books to update it.
Gray wrote that he was using data from the Catalina Sky Survey, which often tracks near-Earth objects, to assess threats to Earth. Catalina found an object about a month after DSCOVR was launched, which was designated WE0913A and initially thought to be a natural object.
“Shortly afterwards, an astronomer in Brazil noticed on a newsgroup that the object was orbiting the Earth, not the Sun, suggesting that it could be a man-made object,” Gray said. After some conversations with the astronomer, Gray and other researchers found that WE0913A passed the moon two days after DSCOVR launched.
I and others accept the second stage association [of Falcon 9] correctly. The object had the brightness we expected, appeared at the expected time, and moved in a reasonable orbit,” Gray continued, but noted that the evidence was “situational” and not entirely conclusive.
“In hindsight,” Gray continued, “I should have noticed some strange things about WE0913A’s orbit. Assuming there were no maneuvers, it would be in a somewhat strange orbit around the Earth before it hovered over the moon. At its highest point, it would soon orbit around The Moon; at its lowest point (perihelion), about a third of that distance. I expected perihelion to be close to the surface of the Earth. Perigee seemed very high.”
At first, Gray thought these differences might be due to fuel leaks, which are very common on older rocket stages. However, this DISCOVR course change would require an extraordinary amount of fuel, although it would still be possible.
“I didn’t have a DSCOVR runway at the time, and flying over the moon seemed perfectly reasonable. [as] Spacecraft often use lunar flights to modify their orbits. But after receiving the email, he searched for records of an object launched shortly before March 2015, in “high orbit passing over the Moon”.
This led him to Chang’e 5 T1; The evidence isn’t conclusive yet and is based on its predicted orbit over time, but additional confidence comes from Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who typically tracks space objects and space junk.
McDowell sent orbital elements to Amateur Radio Cubes What got “share the ride” with the reinforcements, Gray writes, is a very close match, “in a sense, that remains a testament to the circumstances.” But I would consider this as somewhat convincing evidence.”
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