Out-of-control SpaceX rocket on collision course with the moon
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/an-old-falcon-9-rock...
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TL;DR: there was a falcon 9 rocket that launched something in 2015, far away to a LaGrange point, but after completing mission, could not come back to earth and is floating near the moon and will strike it on ~March 4th.
I guess bookmark the date and let's wait and see if some science can pop out of it.
"After 7 years, a spent Falcon 9 rocket stage is on course to hit the Moon"
Deference has nothing to do with it, The Guardian's title is just optimized for clickbait. An out of control rocket on a collision course with the moon paints a vaguely described but exciting picture about a disastrous scenario where there is none and we should avoid sharing such headlines when better ones exist, especially if the original it links to didn't have that issue.
I don’t know how far up the disaster scale this goes, but I would consider the Moon tantamount to a natural preserve on Earth and a crash landing there to be a serious accident.
As for the Moon, it'll be fine and we regularly crash spent spacecraft into it. Remember it has nearly the surface area of Asia and is constantly bombarded by (much larger) space rocks for the same reason this spent stage was pulled in, we'd be strained to notice the results of the impact even if given the exact coordinates beforehand and it'd look no more special than the rest of the moon. If our human presence/activities on the Moon has been your concern while an interesting it's still not what The Guardian is talking about anyways and not a defense of their use of the clickbait title.
It's likely that this will be the first time a piece of space hardware unintentionally strikes the Moon. Typically, during interplanetary missions, a rocket's upper stage is sent into a heliocentric orbit, keeping it away from the Earth and its Moon.
For launches of spacecraft intended to orbit the Earth, the best practice is to reserve enough fuel in a rocket's upper stage to return it to Earth's atmosphere, where it will burn up. This is what SpaceX and most Western rocket companies customarily do to help control debris in low Earth orbit. The Moon, of course, has no atmosphere for the stage to burn up in.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/an-old-falcon-9-rock...
(The “minimize human disturbance of Moon” bit was indeed my personal thought and not really from either article. To me it’s akin to crashing and abandoning a vehicle in a national park: the park will survive just fine but it’s something we should try to avoid if possible.)
If the original source is easily available online, and in English, then I would much rather read THAT, than read a second hand report based on it.
Lol.
Eric Berger is one of the most notable space and launch journalists, if not the one. Whoever is covering space news should at least be aware of that, leave alone not referring to him as a “meteorologist.” Meaning that the Guardian article was drafted by someone who is not exactly well-versed in the domain area.
So, yeah, Ars version would certainly be a better choice here as the source.
He is a meteorologist:
The fact that Guardian’s person referred to him as one just shows that they lifted the whole thing off Ars, including the most irrelevant bit of Eric’s bio.
That's par for the course in basically all reporting on anything scientific