Abandoned rocket 'hits the Moon'

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By Georgina Rannard, BBC News. 

Excerpt: A discarded part of a rocket should have crashed into the Moon's far side by now, say scientists who were expecting the impact at 12:25 GMT. The three-tonne rocket part had been tracked for a number of years, but its origin was contested. At first, astronomers thought it might have belonged to Elon Musk's SpaceX firm, and then said it was Chinese - something China denies. The effects of the impact on the Moon should have been minor. The rocket stage would have dug out a small crater and created a plume of dust. ...The European Space Agency estimates there are now 36,500 pieces of space junk larger than 10cm. No space programme or university formally tracks deep space junk. Monitoring space is expensive and the risks to humans from high-orbit debris are low.… See also NASA web page, Space Debris and Human Spacecraft.

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