US team says Chinese rocket booster hit the moon with secret payload, leaving ‘very unusual’ crater

In 2014, China launched a spacecraft called Chang'e-5 T-1 on a mission to space. It was carried by a powerful rocket known as Long March 3C. After completing its mission, a piece of this rocket ended up crashing into the moon in March 2022. The crash site was unusual because it had two craters instead of one, which is what normally happens. Researchers believe this could mean the rocket was carrying something extra that wasn't supposed to be there. They noticed that the rocket was tumbling through space in a stable way, which suggested it had a heavy object on one end to balance it out. However, the instruments they knew about on the rocket were quite light. This situation is different from past space missions, like the Apollo missions, where rocket parts were intentionally crashed into the moon to help scientists learn more about it. Those crashes only created single craters. The researchers think that to make two craters of similar size, there must have been two heavy objects on the rocket, but they can't be sure what those were. The Chang'e-5 T-1 was a test for another mission that later collected moon rocks and brought them back to Earth. A few months after the test mission, astronomers spotted a piece of space junk and kept track of it. Initially, they thought it was from a SpaceX rocket, but later research confirmed it was from the Long March 3C rocket. When it hit the moon, it created two craters, each over 50 feet wide. The study of this event shows the importance of monitoring space debris. In early 2022, a Chinese official claimed that the rocket part had burned up in Earth's atmosphere, but there was confusion over which mission he was referring to. The researchers' findings suggest he was mistaken.