'Ideally, junk of this sort would be disposed of a little bit more intelligently.'
. He’s one of the few people who has been tracking the rocket fragment since it launched. Following the DSCOVR mission, he and other amateur space trackers equipped with telescopes and cameras have been periodically observing the object every couple of weeks or months. After each observation, Gray would update the stage’s projected orbit around Earth using a software program he’s developed over the last two decades for his company known as Project Pluto.
Determining the Falcon 9’s path has been a little complicated over the years. Space junk like this second stage can absorb sunlight and re-radiate it out into space. That creates a gentle force that can push the object off its path, making it difficult to predict where it’s headed over the long term, Gray says. Additionally, the stage made a close flyby of the Moon on January 5th, and the gravity from an encounter like that can slightly perturb the orbit.
Fears that this will somehow harm our Moon are pretty unfounded since it’s a dead rock that we’ve hurled plenty of objects at before. During the Apollo missions, we crashed various rocket stages into the lunar surface, and both the US and Russia have sent plenty of spacecraft hurling to the lunar ground in pursuit of winning the space race.
Though there’s nothing to fear from the collision, Gray does think this is a good reminder that we need to have better protocols for disposing of space junk — even the pieces that are left in super high orbits. Most of the concern for space debris revolves around pieces left in lower orbits, as they can threaten satellites or the International Space Station. Typically, companies like SpaceX will intentionally dispose of the second stages of their rockets when they go to lower orbits.
But for missions that go to the Moon or to extremely high orbits like DSCOVR, sometimes rocket stages will be left out in the wilderness after the launch is over. Even recently,
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