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Whatever hit the Moon in March, it left a double crater
- sph 4y agoIf it's from NASA or ESA it's a satellite that suffered from catastrophic failure. If it's Chinese, it's "space junk".
- kome 4y ago[flagged]
- moontear 4y agoThe title does not contain the words junk. The subtitle makes a reference. The article makes no suggestions of any failure nor a Chinese satellite failure, why are you suggesting it does?
- jfk13 4y agoIt's The Register. If there's a bad pun somewhere remotely within reach, they'll use it. I don't think it reflects an anti-Chinese bias, just a deliberately irreverent style.
- InCityDreams 4y ago>borderline racist. I see what you did there. Incorrectly, but i see it.
- sebzim4500 4y agoWhat satellite failure? I thought it was a second stage? FWIW responsible launch providers deorbit their spent stages where possible.
- segfaultbuserr 4y ago> This language lack of professionalism [...] Exactly. Don't confuse The Register with a serious and professional publication. For your information, The Register is a British tech news website known for its heavy sarcasm, largely a parody of the writing style of British tabloid journalists. Its official mission statement is Biting the hand that feeds IT. Complaining a famous tabloid for being a tabloid is a waste of time. If you're not a fan of this writing style, you may want to avoid this website in the future. I'm certainly not one.
- the_only_law 4y agoA famous tabloid being HN front page material is certainly a opposite of what the site pretends to be.
- moontear 4y agoWhat makes you say this? It is supposed to be a spent stage of a Chinese rocket booster - though there is no confirmation yet and this is the prevailing theory. Right now it is space junk hitting the moon and it would be space junk no matter the origin of the spent rocket booster.
- kome 4y ago"Space Junk from Chinese missions" reads different from "Chinese junk"
- moontear 4y agoAgreed. I also don’t like the „Chinese junk“ in the subtitle. This is not what the OP was referring though? The article clearly states „space junk“ which I believe is correct.
- randallsquared 4y agoIt is remarkable that a Chinese junk was able to reach the moon. ;) I guess there's a third sense of the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship)
- stkdump 4y ago> a Chinese junk was able to reach the moon Especially considering the enormous size of chinese junks!
- tjpnz 4y agoI think we've found the perfect payload to demonstrate Starship's cargo hauling capabilities.
- CyanBird 4y ago> It is remarkable that a Chinese junk was able to reach the moon. ;) I know! They still have lots to catch up on tho, given that western junk has already reached Mars and beyond! Gogo west! N°1!
- cowsandmilk 4y agoThat’s not my experience at all. Here’s some quotes from NASA indicating what you describe is not their attitude at all. > Space junk is no one countries’ responsibility, but the responsibility of every spacefaring country. > We have generated a global problem that can only be solved with the help from other Countries. Both from https://www.nasa.gov/centers/hq/library/find/bibliographies/space_debris https://www.nasa.gov/centers/hq/library/find/bibliographies/...
- cpursley 4y agoAgree. People, please go re-read Manufacturing Consent.
- tjpnz 4y agoBut we wouldn't know if it was a Chinese satellite that suffered from a catastrophic failure would we? The Chinese state provides very little information on its space program.
- pdpi 4y agoReferring to a discarded booster as space junk is very much on-brand for The Register, irrespective of who launched it.
- cheschire 4y agoEmpty end hits first, dispersing a lot of force. Motor end rotates around still carrying a lot of force and impacts leaving a second crater. Or am I missing something that makes this newsworthy?
- jahnu 4y agoFrom TFA, "No other rocket body lunar collision has ever created two craters to our knowledge."
- Grimburger 4y agoHow many of those are there?
- jfk13 4y agoAccording to https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/a-rogue-rocket-part-is-about-to-collide-with-the-moon https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/a-rogue-r..., this was "the first known event of its kind". So I guess we don't have much to compare with...
- KMag 4y agoThat's not a great source. By "of its kind" they must mean accidental booster stage impacts. NASA intentionally crashed 5 different Saturn V 3rd stages into the moon. At least some of those impacts were to generate vibrations for the seismometers they installed on the moon. See the Wikipedia article linked by the sibling post.
- jahnu 4y agoSort by status: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_on_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_on_...
- mannykannot 4y agoI think it is implied in the article that only the motor is massive enough to excavate a crater. The similarity in size of the craters suggests they were created by objects of similar mass. At least one early rocket design (Atlas) had fuel tanks so insubstantial that they had to be pressurized until they were loaded with fuel on the pad, and a loss of pressure could be expensive... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imkdz63agHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imkdz63agHY
- GEBBL 4y agoDoes the moon take a lot of impacts that would have been destined for earth?
- MonkeyClub 4y agoI have the same question, if anyone knows the answer it'd be awesome. I mean, sure, simply by virtue of the moon's being there, it sort of fends some stuff off like a fence. But beyond that, is its gravitational pull adequate to affect trajectories? If so, wouldn't earth's trump it? (Although the inverse square here may play a big part, but that would also make me more inclined to disregard the moon's gravity pull as assisting in any protection it otherwise naturally affords.) Edit: clarified (?) thought
- thehappypm 4y agoIt’s really more that the moon has no atmosphere. A shooting star on Earth would be a crater on the moon.
- krapp 4y agoAckshually, the moon has a very thin atmosphere, primarily composed of neon, helium and hydrogen.
- outworlder 4y agoNot enough to matter for most purposes.
- h2odragon 4y agoI think the effect of the moon is not so much "catching" things as it is perturbing orbits near earth such that things either crash into earth or moon or get flung away. Without the moon we might have a lot more stuff in solar orbits that overlap earths orbit. I expect this could be explained better (and I may well be totally wrong).
- mannykannot 4y ago
- Linda703 4y ago[dead]
- jstanley 4y agoIsn't the obvious answer that it was actually 2 objects very close together? Or would we expect them to have drifted far enough apart by the time they hit the moon that the craters would not be so close?
- simonh 4y agoIt's highly unlikely they would remain that close unless they split apart very soon before impact. Solar radiation exerts a small force on any object in space that depends on the object's orientation, reflectivity, rotation, etc. This introduces a small variation in it's flight path that can add up to several kilometres of uncertainty in just a few weeks. So even objects with very close flight paths, but differences in structure and rotation, will diverge. Objects with low mass to surface area and an elongated shape, such as empty fuel tanks, are subject to particularly high uncertainty in their trajectory.
- tuco86 4y agoI think maybe some entangled cable. even very little rotation would keep them at a fixed distance.
- simonh 4y agoInteresting, that could work.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- outworlder 4y agoEven without any solar radiation, if they are far apart they are in ever so slightly different orbits. They will drift given enough time.
- compiler-guy 4y agoTo this layman who knows very little about orbits and impact craters, that explanation makes a lot of sense. But the professional software engineer in me knows that even people well skilled in adjacent fields dont understand the issues that makes things “obvious” in my own field. I therefore don’t doubt that the experts who study space debris considered the obvious explanation and rejected it. Or concluded that it wasn’t as obvious as it may seem. That they are willing to defer to the crater-formation expert shows an admirable humility and deference to someone who is far more likely to know.
- bsenftner 4y ago
- coffeeblack 4y agoHow so?
- shakna 4y agoI believe the parent thinks that the use of "Chinese junk" is a reference to the ship style from the 2nd Century. The "Junk" was a fully-battened ship, employed by the Chinese, during that time. Though similar junk ships were used throughout the whole of Asia, it became a symbol of Chinese expansion. The use of the word "junk" when referring to the ship, is not actually an insult or anything of the kind. Practically all medium to large ships from South East Asia were referred to as junks, whether or not they actually had where we get "junk" from - a kind of rigging. (The exact etymology of the word is not, however, clear.) Why the use of such a reference might be insulting... I have no clue. A junk is a junk. It would still be called a junk if you came across one, today. It's just a technical term, not an insult.
- bsenftner 4y agoI said the usage of the phrase stands out. Culturally, historically, China was known for producing "junk" products of lower quality throughout the majority of the 20th century. It used to be a common phrase in the 60's & 70's. Seeing the phrase in the article, and used in the same manner as during the 60's & 70' invokes those decades old attitudes.
- coffeeblack 4y agoI think you are confusing China with Korea and Taiwan here. Mainland China didn’t produce anything before the mid-1980 (when VW opened a factory in Shanghai) and started to export “cheap junk” only around the mid-1990s (after sanctions due to the Tiananmen Massacre).
- DiabloD3 4y agoPossibly an electrostatic discharge "crater" as distance was finally short enough to be bridged by potential, and then the second crater is the actual impact.
- guerrilla 4y agoIs that more plausible or probable than two small objects spread out very slightly in the tangent plane and also a bit in time? They say "the" object a lot but is that something we have the precision to know, i.e. that it was not two objects instead? What I really want to know is if static discharge of that magnitude is common? If so, that's kinda cool.
- mcv 4y agoTwo objects close together would definitely have been my guess, but my orbital mechanics is too weak even for KSP.
- raxxorraxor 4y agoThis small difference would very likely be several kilometers at least. As the article mentioned even the push from photons is relevant for determining the impact site. One of these objects will be closer to the moon and will be affected more by its gravity and less by its own momentum. This effect increases with time and in the end will amount to a large difference.
- Phlarp 4y agoStatic build-up is a big problem in space. Finding a path to ground gets more complex when you're in orbit
- voakbasda 4y agoThat’s an interesting observation. It makes me wonder if that charge can be channeled into a system that harvests the resulting energy. Basically, solar power collection but using static charge that would otherwise accumulate throughout the object. At the very least, I expect a system to dissipate that energy would be required, or wild and crazy things would happen when such a charge suddenly finds a path to “ground”.
- bluelightning2k 4y agoWas it crypto? I have it on good authority from some rather artificial-sounding YouTube comments that that they were planning on going to the moon. raies hand for high five. Gets left hanging...
- eyko 4y agoGot you -- :high_five: Although my 2¢: it was a good joke until the second paragraph. That killed it for me – if I'm fed the explanation there's no more fun in "getting" it.
- bluelightning2k 4y agoLol. Fair!
- mcv 4y agoI was thinking it might have been GME or AMC. Maybe I've been hanging out on /r/WSB too much.
- BeefWellington 4y agoI mean it definitely cratered...
- RealStickman_ 4y agoNot on the moon
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- crikeyjoe 4y agoI think it might have been the Indian lunar probe that crashed into the moon.
- giantg2 4y agoFinally, a proper label for the opposite of double rainbow - double crater.
- swayvil 4y agoThe object was probably longish and cylindrical-ish. Like a baguette. Hit, broke in half, then the other end hit.
- karmicthreat 4y agoThe government decided to finally take out the Moon because it was interfering with local tv channels.
- Shadonototra 4y ago"chinese junk"? why the racism in journalism? did they call it the "american junk" for the Persererance's backshell and parachute? https://www.space.com/mars-helicopter-ingenuity-perseverance-parachute-backshell-photos https://www.space.com/mars-helicopter-ingenuity-perseverance...
- joshstrange 4y agoI also bumped on that line as it felt completely unnecessary.
- mlindner 4y ago'Chinese' here isn't referring to the race, but to the country. So you shouldn't read it as implying racism in any way. In American terminology "American" is not a race nor is "Chinese". If they said "Asian Junk" that'd be racism.
- trasz 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_racism
- wnscooke 4y agoI suppose one difference is that the pieces from Perserverance were _supposed_ to land on Mars. Whereas this object ended up floating around uselessly, like so much other "space junk". And because they suspect it's origin as being China, it makes sense to write it that way. Chinese junk, American junk, Canadian junk, although even these could be softened by "Chinese space junk, American space junk"... I wonder though if it is also being used in a retro sci-fi manner, in that there are crafts called "junks", particularly in English, "Chinese junks". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship) and https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Junk_(ship)#:~:text=A%20junk%20is%20a%20Chinese,successful%20ship%20designs%20in%20history https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Junk_(ship)#:~:te.... Thus it is a chance to use the term for a sailing craft in a new context - a Chinese junk, but in space!
- BurningFrog 4y ago> (18-meter diameter, about 19.5 yards) This is an unfortunate mix of precision and approximation.
- bombcar 4y agoI love the machine-generated ones, where it'll say "1 kilogram, or 2.20462 lbs".
- happyopossum 4y agoWhy? Those are both close enough for the intended purpose. 20 yards would be too imprecise, and 19 yards 24 inches is too wordy...
- curi0sity 4y ago18 meters is the approximation. 19.5 yards implies more precision in the measurement than is appropriate. The original data has two significant figures, but the imperial conversion has three.
- dylan604 4y ago19 yards 18 inches? Did the yard become larger overnight to 48 inches instead of 36?
- BurningFrog 4y agoDo we have a good enough camera in orbit to look at the debris? With no atmosphere, the conditions for that should be ideal.
- Fatnino 4y agoLRO is that camera and that's what took the picture we have. It's getting up there in years so we could probably build something better today but we haven't yet.
- BurningFrog 4y agoI also have a hunch/theory: It happened to hit a ridge of hard rock, which withstood the impact unchanged.
- Jerrrry 4y agoMaterial science is moot at astronomical impact forces. A meteorite hitting sand will make the same impact as if it hit steel.
- upupandup 4y agoI am genuinely curious if the Moon is hollow or not and what could be inside it. How is it that the Moon perfectly eclipses the sun and why does this happen? So many questions about the Moon.
- ch4s3 4y agoYou're in luck! The moon has a solid iron, nickel core[1]. [1]https://moon.nasa.gov/inside-and-out/what-is-inside-the-moon https://moon.nasa.gov/inside-and-out/what-is-inside-the-moon
- tiffanyh 4y agore: Moon eclipses the sun. Answer in this very same thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31893908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31893908
- rsynnott 4y ago> I am genuinely curious if the Moon is hollow or not and what could be inside it I mean, I think if it was, that would have caused some prior comment (and alarm). It's not hollow.
- pollyturples 4y agoApart from the geometrical explanation linked in the other comment, there's an Anthropic Principle angle here too -- the fact that eclipses seemed so "perfect and meaningful" to our ancestors was probably a big factor in the development of mathematics and engineering as they tried to predict the eclipses. another similarly intelligent species on a planet without such "perfect" eclipses wouldnt be intrigued by them enough to try to explain their timing. The fact that planets with such perfect sun/moon relationships are "rare" could be one of the missing factors in the Drake Equation. [something similar was a plot point in the scifi book Dragon's Egg]
- Melatonic 4y agoSend over the Chinese rover to investigate!
- shreyshnaccount 4y agoThing hit moon, impact launched another thing up, which then fell close by? Idk anything about orbits, so the experts have prolly already rejected this hypothesis
- kulikalov 4y agoThat other thing wouldn’t have enough energy to make a comparable crater
- shreyshnaccount 4y agoFair point my bad
- Maraguy 4y agoDoes this mean its even more dangerous to setup a moonbase?
- DoctorOetker 4y agoDoes a similar high resolution image of the same region before date of impact exist? If so it would significantly strengthen the claim that both craters are due to the same recent impact. Looking at the density of craters how can we exclude the possibility that one of the craters simply existed before the new one? What alternative scenarios have been considered and ruled out? It would be nice to see what other explanations were considered but ruled out, and how it was ruled out. For example, did the object hit a lava tunnel? (I don't think so, nor do I see how it could explain a double crater, but I would like to see the thought processes of elimination of hypotheses). If the conclusion is correct, what was the second mass on the opposite end of the rocket motor? Is it some taboo failed project? A "stillborn" crew capsule? EDIT: the linked references actually show before and after images: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasas-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-spots-rocket-impact-site-on-moon https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasas-lunar-reconn...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stouset 4y ago> Looking at the density of craters how can we exclude the possibility that one of the craters simply existed before the new one? One thing to note is that the density of craters on the moon is a result of a relatively infrequent number of impacts over an astronomically long time. With no process by which impact craters are weathered (wind, seismic activity), craters remain essentially forever.
- DoctorOetker 4y agoThis was exactly why I posed the question, but then later I found the before and after images on the NASA site mentioned in my edit. It would have been nice if the journalists included the before image as well.
- invisible 4y agoCould it not be that one is an impact crater and the other is blasted out from an explosion?
- ianai 4y agoSince it seems the suspicion is it being a Chinese booster, two craters makes me wonder if the booster blew up during it’s active mission but remained tethered together. Not like explosions are known to routinely follow expectations.