A rocket stage that’s about to hit the moon isn’t from SpaceX after all.
MetaStellar previously reported that Bill Gray, the developer of Project Pluto, identified an object as the second stage of the DSCOVR spacecraft, launched by SpaceX.
Gray now explains evidence presented by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory finds that the object is the booster for the Chang’e 5-T1 lunar mission. It will, however, still hit the moon within a few kilometers of the predicted spot on 2022 March 4 at 12:25 UTC, within a few seconds of the predicted time.
“Essentially, I had pretty good circumstantial evidence for the identification, but nothing conclusive,” said Gray in a statement acknowledging responsibility for the misidentification.
“Identification of high-flying space junk often requires a bit of detective work, and sometimes, we never do figure out the ID for a bit of space junk,” he said.
Note that MetaStellar related the information provided to it and other news sources as known at the time.
Jim DeLillo writes about tech, science, and travel. He is also an adventure photographer specializing in transporting imagery and descriptive narrative. He lives in Cedarburg, WI with his wife, Judy. In addition to his work for MetaStellar, he also writes a weekly article for Telescope Live.