After initially saying it was a spent Elon Musk SpaceX rocket, an expert now says a Chinese rocket will crash into the moon in a historic first.
Bill Gray, an astronomer and the developer of the asteroid tracking software Project Pluto, initially identified the flying space junk as the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket.
But now Gray says that the large object about to smash into the moon at roughly 9,300km/h (almost 5,800 mph) on March 4 is the booster of a Communist Chinese Long March 3C rocket.
The space junk comes from China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission launched in October 2014 on a Long March 3C rocket.
Gray says the rocket should hit the moon in the Hertzsprung crater, on the far side of the moon. This is the first time that human-created space junk will unintentionally strike the surface of the moon.
