The moon is about to get walloped by a big piece of space junk.
The leftover rocket will smash into the far side of the moon at 5,800 mph on Friday, away from telescopes' prying eyes. It may take weeks, even months, to confirm the impact through satellite images.
Low-orbiting space junk is relatively easy to track. Objects launching deeper into space are unlikely to hit anything and these far-flung pieces are usually soon forgotten, except by a handful of observers who enjoy playing celestial detective on the side. But there were two Chinese missions with similar designations - the test flight and 2020s lunar sample return mission - and U.S. observers believe the two are getting mixed up.
Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics supports Gray's revised assessment, but notes:"The effect will be the same. It'll leave yet another small crater on the moon." "I had been hoping for something to hit the moon for a long time. Ideally, it would have hit on the near side of the moon at some point where we could actually see it," Gray said.
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