NASA confirmed astronomy news that’s been three months in the making after an unknown rocket left a rare double crater on the Moon’s surface.
In recent years, the Moon has been a topic of renewed interest for scientists both because it turns out it was hosting more water than expected and because its soil has been found to be capable of sustaining life.
But you’ve likely noticed that military and space organizations have also been more forthcoming about UFOs and the other mysteries of space lately, with NASA even forming a new specialized team to study the phenomena.
But while it doesn’t seem like we can classify one rocket that made a unique impression on the Moon as such a craft yet, what NASA can confirm is that we don’t know where it came from or why it’s so different from most other rockets.
Last Year, astronomer Bill Gray alerted NASA about an identified piece of space debris that was on a collision course with the far side of the Moon.
According to Insider, this object would make contact as expected in March before its crash site was finally discovered on May 25 by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
In Gray’s words, “I must confess that I’d naively thought it would be easier to find and would have been located shortly after impact.”
And as he explained, he considered that thought so naive because of how long it took people to find the lost booster from the Apollo 16 spacecraft.
As he put it, “That crater was found about six years after the other Apollo booster impacts. Compared to that, having to wait about three months looks pretty good.”
But when NASA released the photos their orbiter had taken on June 24, they noted that they had not expected to find a double crater on the Moon’s surface.
In a release, NASA said this indicated that not only had a rocket crashed down on the Moon , but one with an oddly specific design.
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Namely, the two interconnected craters seem to suggest that it had large, heavy masses at both of its ends.
This is unusual for rocket design as there’s usually only a need for the kind of equipment that would weigh a rocket down in this way at its motor end.
After all, the rest of the rocket is usually only composed of a fuel tank that empties as the rocket takes flight and is thus discarded long before any astronauts land.
Considering how much the rocket that formed the double crater differs from this typical design, NASA suggested that this double crater could be the key to identifying it.
Because as they put it, “No other rocket body impacts on the moon created double craters.”
Using data and photos from Arizona State University, they then explained that while certain Apollo spacecraft have caused irregular impact craters over the years, none of them looked anything like the most recent one.
And at the time of this writing, it seems that identifying the rocket is precisely what NASA will need to do since no nation in the world has claimed responsibility for this unique rocket yet.
