“And you don’t want stuff to rain on people if they’re living there.” See You Later, Crater “The hope is that we’re going back to stay,” says Vishnu Reddy, co-lead of the Space Situational Awareness laboratory at the University of Arizona. The U.S., China, Russia and others are increasingly looking to the moon as humanity’s first extraterrestrial outpost. The lone legitimate worry for this looming impact is what exactly it presages for our future. Precedent shows we should not fret-not just yet, anyway. “This rocket, right now, I don’t think is a huge deal,” says Alice Gorman, a space archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia. “Don’t worry, the moon’s still going to be there after,” Crassidis says.īut what about scattering unsightly litter upon our pristine lunar partner? It turns out that this rocket will join many other piles of space debris already strewn across the lunar surface. As its crater-pocked surface confirms, our natural satellite can shake off all sorts of substantial wallops. “This is not a big deal,” he says.įirst and foremost, this rocket’s demise is not going to disturb Earth’s alabaster orb. So how should we all feel about this imminent impact? Should we throw up our hands in despair at humanity’s recklessness-or, at the very least, wildly gesticulate while uttering our grievances? Like many of his colleagues, John Crassidis, a space debris expert at the University at Buffalo, is opting to shrug his shoulders instead. But the idea that a sizable piece of humanity’s trash is going to litter the moon has fostered disquiet around the globe. Earth is no stranger to space junk falling from the sky, most of which burns up in the atmosphere or splashes down into the ocean. On March 4 a four-metric-ton spent rocket stage will end its uncontrolled, 7.5-year voyage through space with a flourish: it will slam into the far side of the moon, close to the 570-kilometer-wide crater Hertzsprung, at about 9,300 kilometers per hour, creating a modest crater of its own.

What happend to the moon march 4