New NASA Pictures Reveal SpaceX Crash's Devastation On The Moon's Magnificent Desolation
NASA has released images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showing a new crater on the Moon caused by a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage. The incident highlights the lack of international regulation regarding space debris and the potential for environmental contamination of celestial bodies.
Why it matters
As space exploration increases, the lack of clear enforcement mechanisms for space debris management poses a growing risk to lunar and planetary environments.
NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines Add Jalopnik on Google: Preferred Source Google Discover The Moon has a new crater. After launching commercial lunar landers last year, the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket slowly made its unintended way towards our closest neighbor , slamming into it at 5,400 miles per hour on August 5. This upper stage had been essentially thrown away as space junk after its mission, but it just so happened to get sucked in by the Moon's gravity. Now, NASA has released photos of its impact. You can see that the new crater overlaps a pre-existing one, making a sort of lunar Venn diagram. The new crater is 60 feet wide and under 10 feet deep. It should probably get a name, too. How does the "SpaceX Space Junk Crater" sound?
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