China says the rocket that will hit the moon is not theirs

For about a month, we know that a rocket fragment will hit the Moon on March 4. Although everyone agrees on the date, it is always a matter of debate who belongs to the piece of rocket that will hit. A response came from China, the addressee of the latest allegations, and the existing allegations were denied.

Who owns the piece of rocket that will hit the moon?

Astronomer Bill Gray published a blog post in late January and announced that the second stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, launched in 2015 as a result of his investigations, would hit the Moon on March 4. After this post, a researcher from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California sent an e-mail to Gray, stating that the orbits of the rocket and SpaceX’s rocket did not match. Later, Gray published a correction text, confirming the researcher, saying that the most likely candidate is the upper stage of China’s Long March 3C rocket.

After these allegations, Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that the mentioned rocket stage was completely burned in the Earth’s atmosphere and stated that the allegations were false. Following this statement, Gray published another post, making a new claim that Wenbin said he confused the Chang’e 5-T1 mission launched in 2014 with the Chang’e 5 mission launched in November 2020.

Picture of the rocket part that will hit the Moon when we look at the result There is no one who states that it belongs to them as their own, but this does not change the fact that a piece of rocket, which everyone accepts, will hit the Moon on March 4.