In other words, the path of this piece of space junk could have gone in a lot of different directions - like the many scenarios for where balls may roll when a player breaks in pool. 'It's almost like a billiard ball bouncing off of other billiard balls,' Bill Gray, an independent astronomer who first discovered that the Falcon 9 piece would hit the moon, told NPR. The Two-Way After Plenty Of Starts And Stops, Satellite DSCOVR Starts Its Million-Mile Journey It was too far away from Earth and had too little fuel to return, so instead, it's been yanked around by the Earth and the moon's gravitational pull in what experts say is a 'chaotic' orbit. The purpose of the mission was to send the DSCOVR Space Weather Satellite into space, approximately one million miles away from earth.īut seven years later, the upper stage of the rocket booster remains tumbling through space. The piece is part of a Falcon 9 rocket that launched from Florida in 2015. Ī piece of space junk from a SpaceX rocket launch in 2015 is hurtling toward the moon, and is set to crash into the lunar surface on March 4, astronomers have predicted. They originally said it was from a SpaceX rocket, but now believe it is from a Chinese rocket. But seven years later, part of the rocket left behind in space is hurtling straight toward the moon.Įditor's note: Since this story was published, astronomers have revised their conclusions about where the piece came from that is expected to hit the moon. 2015, on its way to send the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite into space.

A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifted off in Florida in Feb.

The moon and more just listen