Calculations show the rocket part would hit the moon a bit north of its equator 'within a minute' of 7.26 a.m. ET on March 4.
A rogue rocket booster could collide with the moon in the next few weeks, according to space experts, an event that could leave a crater on the far side of the moon.
"Right now, we can't get more data because the object is quite close to the sun in the sky. On February 7 and 8, we'll have a brief opportunity to look at it and will get more data, and the above time and location will be better determined," Gray said via email."NASA is monitoring the trajectory of a SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage, which supported the U.S.
RELATED: NASA's DART mission will deliberately crash into an asteroid's moon in the name of planetary defense "Managing the return of the stage to reenter the atmosphere in a controlled and safe way is extremely complex. Disposal on the lunar surface is still the safest."There are about 30 to 50 lost deep space objects like the Falcon rocket stage that have been missing for years, but no space agencies have systematically kept track of space debris so far away from Earth, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
McDowell said on his blog that the orbit of the rocket stage was"somewhat chaotic," as it was affected over time by lunar and solar gravity as well as the Earth's. "This is not 'SpaceX did something bad' -- it's perfectly standard practice to abandon stuff in deep orbit," he added.RELATED: Saturn's ice moon could be a 'stealth' ocean world hospitable to lifeThe resulting dust clouds from an impact could be analyzed for clues to the composition of the lunar surface.
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