'ALIEN ACTIVITY?': NASA's images of crashed 'UFO' on moon spark WILD conspiracy theories
NASA's astronomers discovered an unidentified spacecraft heading toward a lunar collision late last year. However, the rocket crashed into the moon near the Hertzsprung crater on March 4, 2022. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the resulting crater. Surprisingly, the resulted crater created a double-impact crater. An eastern crater (18-meter diameter, about 19.5 yards) is superimposed on a western crater (16-meter diameter, about 17.5 yards), as reported by NASA on June 24.
According to a New York Post report, the images shared have made conspiracy theorists wild on social media, with some labeling them as proof of "alien activity". However, there might be a simple explanation that the dent was left because of the uncontrolled rocket. Whereas, astronomers believe that maybe a giant piece of metal hit the satellite's surface on March 4. But, the origin of the rocket remains a mystery. First, it was thought to belong to SpaceX but was later pinned on China’s space agency. NASA stated images of the crash site which produced a rare double impact crater could help astronomers identify the origin of the spacecraft.
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“The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the rocket body had large masses at each end,” NASA wrote. “Typically a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the motor end; the rest of the rocket stage mainly consists of an empty fuel tank. Since the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the double nature of the crater may indicate its identity. No other rocket body impacts on the Moon created double craters," the space agency stated.
It is for the first time that a manmade object has crashed into the moon without being aimed there. According to NASA, the double crater it left behind is roughly 29 meters (95 feet) wide.
In January, astronomer Bill Gray reported that the junk was a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage launched from Florida in February 2015, which was on a mission to deploy an Earth observation satellite called DSCOVR for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. However, he later retracted his claim and said the rocket part most likely belonged to China. “Back in 2015, I (mis)identified this object as 2015-007B, the second stage of the DSCOVR spacecraft,” Gray, who developed the asteroid-tracking software Project Pluto, said at the time.