Who crashed on the moon?

Sorry if this has been posted before. Just came across the story myself.
So seems a rocket crashed into the moon and nobody is owning up to owning it. Have to wonder why they wouldn't say it is theirs. Is it illegal to crash rockets on the moon?

A mystery rocket crashed into the moon – and no one (on Earth) is owning up

NASA scientists are baffled by a mystery spacecraft that crashed into the moon, creating two large craters. The rocket has been tracked through space since 2015, but no one has claimed it. It was travelling at more than 5 kilometres a second when it hit the lunar surface on March 4 this year – and new images by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show that the impact was unlike anything they had seen before.

Money seems to be on it being Chinese. But no one seems to be 100% sure who owns it. Took 7 years to get there since it was originally discovered in 2015 and tracked until it impacted earlier this year.

lol almost comes off like the space sciencey types are not even sure it is from Earth.

originally posted by: AtomicKangaroo
Sorry if this has been posted before. Just came across the story myself.
So seems a rocket crashed into the moon and nobody is owning up to owning it. Have to wonder why they wouldn't say it is theirs. Is it illegal to crash rockets on the moon?

A mystery rocket crashed into the moon – and no one (on Earth) is owning up

NASA scientists are baffled by a mystery spacecraft that crashed into the moon, creating two large craters. The rocket has been tracked through space since 2015, but no one has claimed it. It was travelling at more than 5 kilometres a second when it hit the lunar surface on March 4 this year – and new images by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show that the impact was unlike anything they had seen before.

Money seems to be on it being Chinese. But no one seems to be 100% sure who owns it. Took 7 years to get there since it was originally discovered in 2015 and tracked until it impacted earlier this year.

lol almost comes off like the space sciencey types are not even sure it is from Earth.

Didn't Israel and India semi-recently have failed attempts at landing probes on the moon?

Im not an astrophysicist but I did watch the Right Stuff, it could be their rocket or whatever was left in orbit around the moon from the 2019 launch.

www.cbsnews.com...

www.msn.com...

Astronomers expected the impact after discovering that an unidentified piece of space junk was on a collision course with the moon late last year. But "the double crater was unexpected," the space agency said in a press release. "No other rocket body impacts on the moon created double craters."

NASA says two large masses on each end of the rocket may have caused the two craters, but that would be unusual, since spent rockets tend to have a heavy motor at one end and a lighter empty fuel tank at the other.

Aliens trying to destroy one of our moon bases.

Two craters?
Maybe a planned crash and a planned detonation of a weapon to see its impact?

The fact that there are TWO craters which may indicate it had two centres of mass is also interesting.

Could be a Chinese military mission gone awry or one of ours or a Russian one.

I am however pretty sure that someone somewhere knows whose space junk this is.

If recent however I would guess this was probably a military or top secret launch but I would put good money on it being Chinese junk.

The second crater is interesting, could it have been a failed stage still attached the payload never deployed, a spy satellite perhaps or even something more sinister.

I can not believe though that someone did not track this from launch onward, probably the west does not want to own up to it's capability's there and the east does not want to own up to an egg on it's face secret mission failure.

a reply to: putnam6

It's been tracked since at least 2015. So yeah not from any 2019 missions.

originally posted by: Nexttimemaybe
Aliens trying to destroy one of our moon bases.

Quick , call Colonel Straker as Moonbase 1 is under attack .

originally posted by: LABTECH767
The fact that there are TWO craters which may indicate it had two centres of mass is also interesting.

Could be a Chinese military mission gone awry or one of ours or a Russian one.

I am however pretty sure that someone somewhere knows whose space junk this is.

If recent however I would guess this was probably a military or top secret launch but I would put good money on it being Chinese junk.

The second crater is interesting, could it have been a failed stage still attached the payload never deployed, a spy satellite perhaps or even something more sinister.

I can not believe though that someone did not track this from launch onward, probably the west does not want to own up to it's capability's there and the east does not want to own up to an egg on it's face secret mission failure.

Oh for sure someone knows who owns it. I'm sure it's not exactly cheap or a one man effort to get a 'rocket' to the moon that has enough mass to leave not one but two impact craters.

As for why there is two craters?

NASA says two large masses on each end of the rocket may have caused the two craters, but that would be unusual, since spent rockets tend to have a heavy motor at one end and a lighter empty fuel tank at the other.

So yeah, I also wonder if it was a rocket stage, what the mass on the other end was? I reckon you'd be close to the mark with a failed rocket that never deployed its payload.

Be great when we can get humans back up there and maybe check out some of these kind of things and see if there is any 'property of...' stickers on them.

originally posted by: Gothmog

Quick , call Colonel Straker as Moonbase 1 is under attack .

Shows like this as a kid made me think we would be living on the moon and space travel would be as normal as catching a bus. (and that we'd be at war with aliens by now too.) Talk about being disappointed.

Almost as bad as when I passed 6' 2" as a teen and realised I would never be an astronaut or fighter pilot simply because I was now too tall. oh well.

a reply to: AtomicKangaroo

Shows like this as a kid made me think we would be living on the moon

How do you know there isn't ?

a reply to: Gothmog

While I cannot say you're not living on the moon. I know I'm not. lol

But yeah, maybe the Battlezone 98 games were based on reality..... we may never know.

Does not look like a rocket to me

1 ------To big
2 -------Not a rocket

originally posted by: AtomicKangaroo

originally posted by: Gothmog

Quick , call Colonel Straker as Moonbase 1 is under attack .

Shows like this as a kid made me think we would be living on the moon and space travel would be as normal as catching a bus. (and that we'd be at war with aliens by now too.) Talk about being disappointed.

Almost as bad as when I passed 6' 2" as a teen and realised I would never be an astronaut or fighter pilot simply because I was now too tall. oh well.

LOL I watched Space 1999 like this was what it was gonna be like in 24 years. I was way off...

FWIW this is ATS we could have bases and they are underground on the Moon to avoid radiation etc. or there are alien bases and we shot missiles at them and NASA is just saying it's the space junk from 2015

Space: 1999 is a British science-fiction television programme that ran for two series from 1975 to 1977. In the opening episode, set in the year 1999, nuclear waste stored on the Moon's far side explodes, knocking the Moon out of orbit and sending it, as well as the 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, hurtling uncontrollably into space

The question you really should be asking is "if they knew about this in 2015 why have they waited till now to tell the story" ? Why didn't they tell the world in 2015?

a reply to: AtomicKangaroo

Money seems to be on it being Chinese.

That's where my money is.

Gray added, however, that the original evidence was not conclusive. And on Saturday, he said, he received a note from Jon Giorgini, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, pointing out that DSCOVR's postlaunch trajectory didn't take it all that close to the moon.
After conducting further research, Gray wrote, he became convinced that the moon-bound rocket stage is actually from China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission, a precursor to the more famous Chang'e 5 mission that brought a sample of the moon back to Earth in 2020.

But at least the impact served a purpose.

"There is particular interest in seeing how impacts produce craters. It's also interesting from an orbital prediction perspective, because it's traveling between the Earth and moon unpropelled," Campbell added. "It's just an inert rocket body tossed around by its own energy and by solar radiation pressure, so we can evaluate our models and see how good our predictions are."
www.space.com...

Seems there's no evidence any Clangers were hurt , so that's good too.

originally posted by: crayzeed
The question you really should be asking is "if they knew about this in 2015 why have they waited till now to tell the story" ? Why didn't they tell the world in 2015?

It's not something many people care about. It's been known amongst the people who do care.

It's been more of a story since it was discovered it was going to impact earlier this year, and is now of more interest because the impact site has been discovered and it's unusual.

Thank god it’s not a Tesla roadster

There is no shame in losing a rocket, plenty of them have blown up and gone off track before. It is a bad day for those at mission control, finding a practical way that works is a necessary part of the program.

As for why no one is going to admit to it suggests it is a black project. Don't want any uncomfortable questions about what is really going on.

Throwing stuff at the moon just to see it blow up has been done before. To hit the moon on a 7 year trajectory from Earth by an unguided and out of control rocket does come across as an amazing fluke.

Maybe this mission was more about mapping the space between Earth and the Moon, just slowly measuring and tracking all kinds of variables along the way?

originally posted by: Raggedyman
Two craters?
Maybe a planned crash and a planned detonation of a weapon to see its impact?

They definitely toyed with that idea.

a reply to: kwakakev

Most lunar impacts are either deliberate, either because it was part of the mission (like the Ranger program or GRAIL) or because they wanted discarded rocket parts out of the way (like the Saturn S-IVB stages).

The problem they have is that even things in a stable orbit get pulled into the moon by its uneven gravity causes by Mascons (mass concentrations - dense areas from large impacts). It's assumed that this is what that is - a spent rocket stage with no means of correcting its orbit. The odd part is the impact shape. It could be part of some secret project, and China's denial means nothing, but we'll probably never know if the impact was deliberate or not.