Remnants of an out-of-control rocket hit the moon on Friday, amid disagreements over which country launched it and debates over how difficult it would be to track man-made objects into outer space.
Scientists believe that the missile debris will hit the far side of the moon, outside the range of ground-based telescopes and possibly far from the field of view of a NASA space probe orbiting the moon, according to the “Space.com” website.
Experts say that the timing of the unintentional accident will be around 7:25 am EST (12:25 GMT) on Friday.
In the past, vehicles have been launched to collide with the Moon with the intent of carrying out scientific missions, but this upcoming collision is the first unintended incident tracked.
These missile residues have raised a lot of controversy during the past months, after scientists believed that they were the remains of a "SpaceX" missile, which had been lost in space for years, but it turned out that astronomers had misdiagnosed.
According to experts, missile remnants will actually collide with the moon on the fourth of next March, but, contrary to what was previously announced, this will not be from the remnants of a US company missile, but rather from a Chinese missile.
According to the new data, the debris that will collide with the moon belongs to a layer of the "Long March" rocket, which was launched in 2014 on a mission called "Changi-5-T1" within the framework of the Chinese space agency's program to explore the moon.