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Part of one of Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets expected to hit dark side of the moon in March

27 January 2022 15:33 (UTC +04:00)

SpaceX will be getting to the moon a bit more than a month from now, far earlier than expected, APA reports the New York Times.

But it’s all by accident, and it’ll cause a bit of a mess.

SpaceX, the rocket company started by Elon Musk, has been selected by NASA to provide the spaceship that will take its astronauts back to the surface of the moon. That is still years away.

Instead, it is the four-ton upper stage of a SpaceX rocket launched seven years ago that is to crash into the moon on March 4, based on recent observations and calculations by amateur astronomers.

The impact is predicted for 7:25 a.m. Eastern time, and while there is still some uncertainty in the exact time and place, the rocket piece is not going to miss the moon, said Bill Gray, developer of Project Pluto, a suite of astronomical software used to calculate the orbits of asteroids and comets.

“It is quite certain it’s going to hit, and it will hit within a few minutes of when it was predicted and probably within a few kilometers,” Mr. Gray said.