How did a 4-tonne piece of rocket accidentally end up on track to smash on the lunar surface — and is it anything to worry about?
The later stages are a different story. Their job is to insert the satellite to where it's needed before they detach.
For launches bound for high-Earth orbit — we're talking around 36,000km — anything that needs disposing of gets shoved out another few hundred kilometres into what's known as the "graveyard orbit".So how did the Falcon 9 rocket get all the way to the Moon? DSCOVR's job is to monitor ebbs and flows in the stream of charged particles that spew from the Sun — called the solar wind —- and give space weather forecasters warning that a damaging surge might be on its way.The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that delivered DSCOVR had two stages. When the first stage ran out of fuel, it dropped off and headed back to Earth .Its job done, the second stage was jettisoned and left to tumble through space, more than a million kilometres from Earth.
Until January this year, that is, when a close flyby with the Moon sent the rocket stage on a long, looping course that will, on March 4, see it crash into the Moon at about 8,000 kph.Unfortunately, it's on the non-Earth-facing side of the Moon, so we won't see it happen.And it will probably be a spectacular sight. The Moon has no atmosphere, so the stage won't burn up on its way down.
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