When And Where To See Elon Musk’s Out Of Control SpaceX Rocket That Will Crash Into The Moon At 5,700 Mph
When is the SpaceX rocket going to crash into the Moon?
On February 11, 2015 a Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched from Cape Canaveral. After sending the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite into an orbit where there’s an unhindered view of the Sun the rocket’s spent upper stage went into a chaotic elliptical orbit of Earth.
Seven years later and it’s about to crash into the Moon, as reported first by Ars Technica after calculations by Bill Gray at Project Pluto who tracks near-Earth objects.
When will the SpaceX rocket hit the Moon?
The SpaceX rocket will hit the Moon at 12:25:58 Universal Time on March 4, 2022 when the four tonne rocket part—officially known as 2015-007B—strikes the Moon’s surface at a speed of about 5,700 mph.
It will do so because it’s elliptical orbital path takes it beyond the Earth-Moon distance.
When will the SpaceX rocket be visible?
Exactly a month earlier on February 7 and 8, 2022 the Falcon 9 upper stage is going to be visible from Earth. That’s because it will round the Earth on its night-side.
It’s the only time it’s going to be possible to see it before it loops way beyond the Moon then smashes into our natural satellite on the way back.
Before all that happens we can all take a look at object 2015-007B.
Where to watch the SpaceX rocket
Italian astronomer Gianluca Masi at The Virtual Telescope has announced that the event will be broadcast here at 18:00 UTC on both February 7 and 8, 2022. He says that on the latter date the object will be at its brightest because it will be closer to Earth, at about 28,000 miles/45,000 kilometers.
Can you watch the SpaceX rocket stage hit the Moon?
No, that’s not going to be possible—at least, not from Earth—because it will actually crash into the far side of the Moon, specifically near a carter called Hertzsprung. Probably.
However, it’s possible that the impact and/or the crater it causes could be snapped by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and/or India’s Chandrayaan-2 orbiter.
But hang on ... should we be outraged by this unnecessary littering/destruction of the Moon’s pristine environment with “space junk?”
NASA’s Ranger missions
It’s certainly not the first time it’s happened. NASA eventually—after a few misses—intentionally crashed some of its Ranger spacecraft into the Moon in 1964 so it could send back images of the lunar surface just before impact.
Ranger 7 sent back a whopping 4,316 images of the Moon (and left a large crater) while Ranger 8 returned more than 7,000 images and Ranger 9 live TV pictures.
NASA’s Apollo 13 booster impact experiment
In 1970 the detached upper stage of the Saturn V rocket that took the disastrous Apollo 13 to the Moon was intentionally aimed at its surface.
Its striking of the lunar surface—which also produced a small crater—was recorded by a seismometer while particle detectors sensed molecules from both the impact itself and the resulting deflection of the solar wind.
NASA’s LCROSS mission
Years later in 2009 NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission deliberately smashed a Centaur stage into the Moon on 2009 in an effort to confirm the presence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s south pole.
In short, lunar impacts so far have been done for science.
However, that’s not the case with the SpaceX rocket.
“We know lots of junk from lunar missions has ended up hitting the Moon, for example upper stages from lunar missions and junk left in lunar orbit,” writes astronomer Jonathan McDowell on his website. “This is the first time that something not explicitly targeted at the Moon has been noticed to accidentally hit it.”
He says that it’s mainly because no one has been paying attention to the 30 to 50 lost deep space objects until Bill Gray, who spotted 2015-007B.
Did SpaceX do something wrong?
“This is not ‘SpaceX did something bad’—it’s perfectly standard practice to abandon stuff in deep orbit,” writes McDowell. “This is ‘none of the space agencies care about leaving stuff out beyond the Moon’.”
However, with the age of commercial space industry there’s going to be a lot more junk like this. Something needs to be done. “It’s time for the world to get more serious about regulating and cataloging deep space activity,” writes McDowell.
Why we need to launch rockets and satellites
There seems to be a swell of doubt around whether the carbon footprints of rocket launches can be justified in this age of rampant climate change. Attaching the term “space junk” and Elon Musk’s name instantly make it a big and negative story.
However, it’s worth remembering that the DSCOVR satellite this spent rocket part came from is doing incredible science. It’s giving the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) read-outs of the current state of space weather, which when severe can cause problems for astronauts, satellites and electricity grids.
More importantly, it’s part of a suite of Earth and space-observing satellites that tell us much of what we know about our changing climate.
Nobody likes space junk, but it often has a noble origin.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
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