A SpaceX Rocket Just Crashed Into the Moon. Nobody’s Actually Seen It Happen Yet.

This hasn’t been the top week for Elon Musk. First his SpaceX banal took a deed arsenic its post-IPO lockup expired. Now 1 of his rockets apt collapsed into the moon.

Early Wednesday morning, the discarded precocious shape of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was owed to slam into the moon at 5,400 miles per hour, much than doubly the velocity of a bullet, according to the New York Times. The scheduled clip has now passed. So far, cipher has confirmed it really happened.

Astronomer Bill Gray, who first predicted the collision, called the likelihood of spotting a visible flash aliases debris plume “quite iffy” beforehand. Reporter Kenneth Chang, who covered the communicative for the Times, said afterward there’d been nary contiguous reports of a flash, but noted that was expected anyway. Confirming the clang requires comparing before-and-after outer photos of the effect site, which takes time. A Korean spacecraft, Danuri, is expected to walk complete the tract astir 8 hours aft impact. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter won’t get location for six days.

But the physics time off small existent uncertainty that the clang happened. As Chang says, thing short of aliens shooting the rocket retired of the entity could person knocked it disconnected course.

This hasn’t been the top week for Elon Musk. First his SpaceX banal took a deed arsenic its post-IPO lockup expired. Now 1 of his rockets apt collapsed into the moon.

Early Wednesday morning, the discarded precocious shape of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was owed to slam into the moon at 5,400 miles per hour, much than doubly the velocity of a bullet, according to the New York Times. The scheduled clip has now passed. So far, cipher has confirmed it really happened.

Astronomer Bill Gray, who first predicted the collision, called the likelihood of spotting a visible flash aliases debris plume “quite iffy” beforehand. Reporter Kenneth Chang, who covered the communicative for the Times, said afterward there’d been nary contiguous reports of a flash, but noted that was expected anyway. Confirming the clang requires comparing before-and-after outer photos of the effect site, which takes time. A Korean spacecraft, Danuri, is expected to walk complete the tract astir 8 hours aft impact. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter won’t get location for six days.

But the physics time off small existent uncertainty that the clang happened. As Chang says, thing short of aliens shooting the rocket retired of the entity could person knocked it disconnected course.