Rocket About To Slam Into the Moon Was Launched by China, Not SpaceX

A high-definition image of the Mars Australe lava plain on the Moon taken by Japan’s Kaguya lunar orbiter in November 2007. Credit: JAXA/NHK

Last month, astronomers reported that a discarded upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, launched 7 years ago, was on a collision course with the Moon. The rocket in question carried Pluto Project, explained that the erroneous identification of the object as DSCOVR’s upper stage back in 2015 was based on shaky evidence.  

This animation features actual satellite images of the far side of the moon, illuminated by the sun, as it crosses between the DSCOVR spacecraft’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) and telescope, and the Earth – one million miles away. These images were captured on July 16, 2015. Credit: NASA/NOAA

“Essentially,” he wrote, “I had pretty good circumstantial evidence for the identification, but nothing conclusive. That was not at all unusual. Identifications of high-flying space junk often require a bit of detective work, and sometimes, we never do figure out the ID for a bit of space junk; there are a couple of unidentified bits of junk out there. (At least, not identified yet.)”

But the detective work he’d carried out was suggestive enough that he considered it a positive ID for the SpaceX rocket, and no one questioned it. That is, until February 12, 2022, when Gray received an email from Jon Giorgini at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Rocket About To Slam Into the Moon Was Launched by China, Not SpaceX