Drifting SpaceX Rocket Heading For Accidental Collision With the Moon (space.com) 27
"Space.com and The Guardian are reporting that the Falcon 9 upper stage leftover from the launch of the Firefly Blue Ghost-1 lander on Jan. 15, 2025 is due to impact the Moon on Aug. 5, 2026," writes longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot. From a report: Onboard the same flight was the Hakuto-R Mission 2, called Resilience, a robotic lunar lander developed by the Japanese company ispace. According to a new study by an international team, the resulting impact plume may briefly be bright enough to see against the dark sky near the moon's edge. That means it might be visible to moongazers with sufficiently sensitive telescopes. This head-on collision of the errant stage is expected to occur near the Einstein and Bell craters near the western lunar limb. It may well be visible to ground and space-based assets.
Using special physics simulations to model the impact, William Jo, a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas, Austin and colleagues predict the debris plume from the impact will have the central ejecta spike reaching roughly 47 miles to over 60 miles (75 kilometers to 100 kilometers) altitude. "Our calculations suggest the plume should be several orders of magnitude brighter than the dark-sky background for the first few minutes after impact," Jo told Space.com. "So the plume should be visible, though I'd stress this is a single nominal case. The real one will look different, and the numbers are on the optimistic side. But the point worth making is that the flash isn't really the story here." Jo emphasized that there's great slam-dunk science to be had. "Watching this one gives us a rare chance to open up ejecta-plume science and calibrate those models against a real event, which matters for every future thing we deliver to the moon," Jo said.
Using special physics simulations to model the impact, William Jo, a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas, Austin and colleagues predict the debris plume from the impact will have the central ejecta spike reaching roughly 47 miles to over 60 miles (75 kilometers to 100 kilometers) altitude. "Our calculations suggest the plume should be several orders of magnitude brighter than the dark-sky background for the first few minutes after impact," Jo told Space.com. "So the plume should be visible, though I'd stress this is a single nominal case. The real one will look different, and the numbers are on the optimistic side. But the point worth making is that the flash isn't really the story here." Jo emphasized that there's great slam-dunk science to be had. "Watching this one gives us a rare chance to open up ejecta-plume science and calibrate those models against a real event, which matters for every future thing we deliver to the moon," Jo said.
Re: junk (Score:1)
Re: junk (Score:5, Funny)
Re: junk (Score:4, Funny)
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"Quark"
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
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Re: junk (Score:2)
She's gone from suck to blow!
Re: junk (Score:2)
A vacuum cleaner in a vacuum. :)
I do not think that will work well.
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Mel Brooks has shown decades ago that it works.
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Mel Brooks has shown decades ago that it works.
Mel "McAfee" Brooks also got caught snorting pure bootleg air and flipping Mega Maids skirt up to reveal her backdoor with that whole suck2blow script.
Heard he's hoping a few less Assholes get hired for the sequel.
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Black holes work wonderfully. Think of it: each and every galaxy is an accretion disk, a bunch of stuff being sucked into the central supermassive black hole.
Re: junk (Score:2)
Black holes use gravity, not vacuum to suck matter into themselves. Although both suck, the vacuum cleaner relies on the pressure of surrounding air.
I know, very unfunny in attempting humor, but this is Slashdot after all
Re: junk (Score:1)
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Re: junk (Score:2)
SpaceX Trajectory (Score:3, Insightful)
Drifting SpaceX Rocket Heading For Accidental Collision With the Moon
Drifting SpaceX Stock Valuation Heading For Accidental Collision With Market Bottom
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Summary: "SpaceX stock gets mooned"
"Accidental" is the wrong word (Score:5, Informative)
This second stage pushed another satellite out to lunar orbit, which means this second stage itself was on an orbit itself that extended to lunar orbit. It's since been orbiting the earth and going all the way back out to lunar distance, and it was really only a matter of time before it and Moon would end up in the same place.
No "accident" here, just orbital mechanics and time.
Se7eneves! (Score:1)
The time machine (Score:3)
You know what happened after the moon shattered.
This was already documented (Score:2)
I saw it on TV so I know it's true.
This impact is exactly what started the "Space: 1999" docu-series.
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I thought it was a magnetic radiation explosion? Causes by two Scottish terriers attracted to each other colliding next to a fuel dump.
"We will destroy humanity." - Ignignokt (Score:2)
"Yeah, buttmunch! You attacked us first!" - Err
One day the site will be a lunar park (Score:2)
with a historical marker.