Whatever hit the Moon in March, it left a double crater

When space junk crashed into the Moon earlier this year, it made not one but two craters on the lunar surface, judging from images revealed by NASA on Friday. Astronomers predicted a mysterious object would hit the Moon on March 4 after tracking the debris for months. "Surprisingly the crater is actually two craters, an eastern crater superimposed on a western crater," said NASA. No other rocket body lunar collision has ever created two craters to our knowledge. "The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the rocket body had large masses at each end. 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," the American space agency added. "I'm a little puzzled by the double crater appearance. But I am in no way an expert on high-speed impacts, except to know that they can have some very strange results. In any case, I'm very pleased that the LRO folks were able to locate this," he said. "I can't say the double crater proves things one way or the other," he told The Register. "That bit is a head-scratcher. I don't think this will tell us anything about whether it's the Chang'e 5-T1 booster. We basically have that nailed from other information. And the selenologists, who know a lot more about crater formation than I do, may come up with a completely different reason as to how a perfectly normal bit of rocket hardware could generate twin craters."