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Victoria Bela

In a show of space surveillance strength, a newly launched Chinese satellite tracked a piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashing into the moon and captured footage of its impact.
No visible plume can be seen in the images that appear to show the moment of impact, which is consistent with what other scientists and telescopes reported immediately after the rocket debris struck on Wednesday.
China’s Gande-1 01 space debris monitoring satellite, launched on July 24, carried out the tracking. It is the country’s first satellite of its kind, and part of a planned monitoring constellation expected to be completed by 2030.
The monitoring provided not only a record of the impact, but also a “proof of ability” for the technology, according to the satellite’s developer, Beijing-based aerospace company ATmoto Technology, also known as Aotian Technology.
“The impact of the Falcon 9 upper-stage debris on the moon was an ‘unplanned’ space event, but it became an excellent window to test the operational capabilities of the space-based situational awareness system,” the company said in a social media post on Wednesday.
An upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket – around the size of a bus – crashed onto the moon near the Einstein crater, on the edge of the side visible from Earth.
The discarded rocket component is from a commercial launch that occurred in January last year. Following a successful mission, the upper stage was unable to de-orbit, with solar activity and gravitational forces eventually causing it to drift into a trajectory that intersected the moon, according to the US space agency Nasa.
“Impacts like this are rare, but they can happen with objects in these types of orbits, and we worked with Nasa on the optimal disposal solution,” SpaceX said in a social media post.


ATmoto said its newly launched space debris monitoring satellite had been tracking the debris since the start of the month. On impact day, it recorded footage of the expected landing area during the estimated time of collision.
Developed in partnership with Liangxi Aerospace Technology Group, Gande-1 01 is the first in a planned 120-satellite space debris monitoring constellation, according to a report by state news agency Xinhua last month.
Its launch in July was part of the constellation’s first phase, which aims to put 14 satellites into operation by next year. ATmoto said in June that the constellation would be able to comprehensively monitor debris in Earth’s orbit at all times.
Gande-1 01 is equipped with a high-resolution, precision-measurement camera, which allows it to accurately identify space debris across Earth’s orbit.
It also has an on-board artificial intelligence-based computer that allows it to adjust to different conditions without frequent intervention from an operator on the ground, according to the company.
Equipped with the specialised camera, ATmoto and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Purple Mountain Observatory were able to track and capture images of the faint debris. They also estimated a time and location of impact.
The Falcon 9 debris hit the lunar surface at an estimated 8,712km/h (5,413mph or 2.42km/s), according to the company. Previous estimates by researchers suggested this impact would probably create a new crater around 20 to 30 metres (66 to 98 feet) in diameter and trigger an observable dust plume.
However, the impact did not leave as visible a trace as expected when seen from Earth, though a telescope in Chile was able to observe evidence of sodium and lithium gas in a plume of lunar dust, according to The Guardian.
Nasa said before the crash that it would try to use its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and ShadowCam instrument on South Korea’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter to capture images of the site both before and after impact.
On Thursday, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, which operates the orbiter, released before-and-after pictures of the impact location on social media showing traces of scattered lunar material and changes in the terrain around the impact site.
Scientists around the world have been tracking the rocket debris and anticipating the impact, as valuable data can be collected from the event.
Objects frequently hit the moon, though it is rare for man-made objects to cause an impact. According to Nasa, a meteoroid with the same destructive power as Falcon 9’s upper stage, which weighs around 4,000kg (8,800lbs), hits the moon about once every six days.
In a paper posted on the preprint server arXiv last month, an international team including Nasa researchers said that the impact offered an “ideal opportunity” to study a significant lunar impact with a known object in real time.
“This event provides an opportunity to test a pipeline for localising impacts on the lunar surface for future seismic experiments, investigating the dust and plume dynamics from impact events on the moon, and considering hazards from artificial space debris impacts,” said the paper, which has not yet undergone peer review.
ATmoto said on social media that studying the impact could be significant for understanding the physics of lunar impacts and how material is ejected from the moon’s surface.


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Gande-1 01 is China’s first space debris monitoring satellite and the lead unit in a planned 120-satellite monitoring constellation


Gande-1 01 is China’s first space debris monitoring satellite and the lead unit in a planned 120-satellite monitoring constellation.


Chinese satellite captures video of SpaceX rocket debris crashing into the moon

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Gande-1 01 is China’s first space debris monitoring satellite and the lead unit in a planned 120-satellite monitoring constellation

Gande-1 01 is China’s first space debris monitoring satellite and the lead unit in a planned 120-satellite monitoring constellation