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Piece of SpaceX rocket believed to have crashed into the moon

reuters.com

26 points by thm 2 days ago · 10 comments

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rich_sasha 2 days ago

SpaceX in a nutshell: simultaneously going to the moon and crashing.

auspiv 2 days ago

which would make it the 37th+ spacecraft to hit the moon

(most S-IVB rocket stages and Lunar Module ascent stages impacted the Moon - not tracked individually on that page)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Spacecraft_that_impac...

jrmg 2 days ago

Will we be able to get pictures of this?

I presume that if the answer is ‘yes’ we will do so, and I’d like to see some!

  • simondotau 2 days ago

    The answer is no. Hubble's visible-light resolution is about 0.05 arcseconds, which translates to 90 metres per pixel, far too large to make out anything that's "merely" bus sized. An imager would need to in orbit around the moon to have any reasonable chance.

    It seems like they're hoping to detect the plume of dust caused by the collision, however.

    • NetMageSCW 2 days ago

      The crater created by the impact with the dust throw around it will be bigger.

    • garaetjjte 2 days ago

      ...but there's a imager in orbit around the moon, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

  • dylan604 2 days ago

    Multiple lunar orbiters will be passing overhead at some point. They will produce images of the after effects that can be used in a before/after comparison. But the crash will(was??) not be televised or live streamed which is probably more along what you are asking.

altmanaltman 2 days ago

The memes write themselves

  • simondotau 2 days ago

    Astronaut 1: “Wait, the lunar landing system is just gravity?”

    Astronaut 2: “Always has been.”

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