China denied on Monday that the piece of rocket to crash in March on the Moon is the remains of one of its launchers, contrary to what experts claim.
At the end of January, astronomer Bill Gray, creator of software to calculate the trajectories of asteroids and other objects, announced that the space debris due to crash on March 4 was the second stage of a rocket of the American company SpaceX. Bill Gray returned to this announcement last week, acknowledging an error, and now claiming that it is part of a Chinese rocket launched in 2014.
Chinese Foreign Ministry denies
When questioned, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied, assuring that the incriminated rocket “had re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere without danger and had completely burned”. Beijing “is conscientiously committed to the long-term viability of its space activities,” Chinese diplomatic spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters.
According to Bill Gray, whose software is used by NASA-funded observation programs, the object in question belongs to a Long March rocket launched when the spacecraft launched into space. Chang’e 5-T1, part of the lunar exploration program of the Chinese space agency. In early 2019, China landed a device on the far side of the Moon, a world first.
