The moon's spacecraft graveyard will soon welcome another body.
, a joint effort of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. DSCOVR studies our planet and the space weather environment from the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 1 , a gravitationally stable spot about 930,000 miles from Earth in the sunward direction.
The upper stage was so high after sending DSCOVR on its way, however, that it didn't have enough fuel to return to its home planet, Berger wrote. So it's been cruising through the Earth-moon system on a long and looping orbit for nearly seven years. "At a guess, the above prediction may be wrong by a degree or two minutes from the predicted time," Grayabout the coming impact, citing the difficulty of modeling precisely how sunlight pressure moves a tumbling, cylindrical object such as a rocket stage.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
SpaceX Dragon splashes down off Florida coast with nearly 5,000 pounds of science on boardThe splashdown was delayed by a few hours after bad weather.
Read more »
Part of a SpaceX rocket is going to crash into the moon. It's probably fine.Observers on Earth probably won't be able to see the crash, but the collision may kick up interesting pieces of moon debris.
Read more »