Photographed by NASA lunar probe, a crater left by an artificial object that collided with the back of the moon in March 2022 | sorae Portal site to space

This is NASA’s lunar orbiting satellite“Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)”It is an image of the moon surface acquired by.Cannot be seen directly from the earthOther side of the moonIt is in“Hertzsprung Crater”A place slightly distant from (about 570km in diameter) to the northeast is captured.

At the end of the arrow,Diameter 16mWith the crater (on the left)Diameter 18m(Right side) craters overlappedA set of cratersIs reflected. Actually, according to this crater, NASA, it is not natural,Craters recently formed by man-made objectsIt is said that it is.

■ Formed by an artificial object that collided in March 2022, may the double structure be a clue?

[▲ Credit: Gianluca Masi / The Virtual Telescope Project]which appears to be an artificial object that collides with the far side of the moon on March 4, 2022.

“An artificial object that appears to be part of a rocket launched in the past will collide with the far side of the moon on March 4, 2022.”Do you remember that the prediction became a hot topic from January to March of the same year?

Initially, the colliding object was thought to be the second stage of the SpaceX rocket “Falcon 9” launched in 2015, but later analysis revealed that the Chinese rocket “Long March 3” was launched in 2014. There was also a possibility that it was related to “Collision”.The object isCollision near Hertzsprung Crater around 21:25 on March 4, 2022, Japan timeHowever, according to NASA, it remains unclear from which rocket the man-made object came from.

Related: An artificial object collided with the other side of the moon on March 4. Part of a rocket launched in the past?

The first image by LRO is about two and a half months after the collision.May 21, 2022Was acquired in. According to NASA, the crater was found at a latitude of 5.226 degrees north and a longitude of 234.486 degrees east near the Hertzsprung crater, which is closer to the east-northeast than expected.

[▲AnimationimagecomparingcollisionpointsDoublecratersnotshownintheimagetakenonFebruary282022beforethecollisionappearintheimagetakenonMay212022afterthecollision(Credit:NASA/Goddard/)ArizonaStateUniversity)】

What’s interesting is the collision of this man-made objectTwo side-by-side double-structured craters were formedThe fact is. Compared to the image taken on February 28, 2022, just before the collision, it did not collide in the immediate vicinity of the natural craters that existed for a long time, but both were formed by the collision of artificial objects. I understand. Although it was unexpected that a double crater was formed,Possibility of showing the identity of the collided artificial objectNASA mentions that there is.

On the moonArtificial objects such as parts of rockets and spacecraft have collided many times so farLRO has photographed the collision point from the lunar orbit. NASA is one example of this, the lunar rocket used in the Apollo program.Collision crater of the third stage “S-IVB” of “Saturn V”Shows the image that captured. The craters formed by the S-IVB collisions are all somewhat irregular in contour, but all.Single craterIs formed as.

[▲ Image of the collision point of the third stage “S-IVB” of Saturn V launched by four lunar exploration missions. From left: Apollo 13, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 17 (Credit: NASA / Goddard / Arizona State University)]

Stages such as the first and second stages of a typical liquid fuel rocket have a cylindrical structure in which the rocket engine is mounted at the lower end of the tank, which is mainly filled with propellants (fuel and oxidizer). The separated stage has almost no propellant left in the tank,Mass is concentrated on one end where the engine is mountedTherefore, past collisions have formed a single-structured crater.

However, what was formed by this collision was a double-structured crater. According to NASA, the structure of this crater isPossibility to indicate that mass was concentrated at both ends of the colliding stageIt is said that there is. In other words, there may have been some heavy object at the end (upper end) opposite to where the engine is. By the way, the maximum width of the double crater formed by the collision on March 4, 2022 is 29m, which is close to the diameter of the crater formed by the collision of S-IVB (35m or more).

The image at the beginning was acquired using LRO’s optical observation device “LROC” and was released by NASA on June 24, 2022.

Source

• Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University
• NASA – NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Spots Rocket Impact Site on Moon

Text/Matsumura Takehiro