It's likely that other objects abandoned in deep space have smashed into the Moon too, Dr McDowell wrote on his website. "So any risks of it floating around in these very unstable and unpredictable orbits are removed." "We'll know where it is, and that it's not going anywhere. In 2015, it helped ferry the Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, to its spot in deep space, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, between us and the Sun.ĭSCOVR's job is to monitor ebbs and flows in the stream of charged particles that spew from the Sun - called the solar wind - and give space weather forecasters warning that a damaging surge might be on its way. The Falcon 9 engine that's currently en route to the Moon has travelled much further than most other satellite-delivering rockets. So how did the SpaceX rocket get all the way to the Moon? "For objects launched into low-Earth orbit, those upper-stage rocket bodies … slowly degrade in altitude, and eventually re-enter the atmosphere and burn up," Dr Carter says.įor launches bound for high-Earth orbit - we're talking around 36,000km - anything that needs disposing of gets shoved out another few hundred kilometres into what's known as the "graveyard orbit".īut even that is nowhere near the distance to the Moon, which hangs out around 384,000km away. Their job is to insert the satellite to where it's needed.Īnd there are plenty of depleted upper rocket stages circling the planet as space junk. The later or upper stages are a different story. Once out of fuel, the first stage typically falls back to Earth quickly, simply because it's not reached the speed or altitude that will keep it in stable orbit around the planet, says Brett Carter, a space scientist at RMIT University.Īs of December 2015, SpaceX (owned by Elon Musk) has successfully landed the first stage of Falcon 9 rockets to be reused. It gets the payload off the ground and up a couple of hundred kilometres. The first stage of a launch includes the blazing blast you see on lift-off. The rockets on which satellites are ferried into space tend to have multiple stages, comprising engines and fuel, which propel the payload until they run out of propellant and drop off. So how did a 4-tonne piece of rocket accidentally end up on track to smash on the lunar surface - and is it anything to worry about? What normally happens to spent rockets? ( Supplied: NASA)īut the Falcon 9 rocket booster is the first artificial object, one that wasn't sent as part of a mission to the Moon to unintentionally hit it, that astronomers have noticed. ![]() The white layer is an ice belt, clouds or some other atmospheric phenomena? But it looks like a continuous white line around Earth and that is consistent with the flat Earth model: the land in the center and the ice belt around the edge.An artist's rendering of the LCROSS spacecraft sending its rocket's upper stage hurtling towards the Moon. " class="bbc_link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> For that reason this video is significant and worthy of study.Īlso, I've just seen some footage of a Virgin rocket flight which also shows a white layer around the Earth's circumference. Even if this isn't proof of dome or ice belt, this is the real planet Earth we're looking at. Given all the fake NASA videos/photos, this is the real planet Earth. Where are the satellites? None visible despite the rocket rotating a lot and showing a fair bit of the Earth's circumference. The rocket was fired from Nevada, USA and there are no satellites, space debris visible. If you watch the video in *very* slow motion you will see that fragment for a fraction of a second. That's not an alien ship - it's part of the rocket breaking off when the rocket stops or slows down or hits the dome. You see the fragment in the right box here. However, I believe you can argue the opposite view and suggest the rocket did hit something. If you want to believe it had already slowed down and the top stopped spinning, fair enough. ![]() I've watched the video several times and it's open to debate if the rocket has stopped or not.
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