A rocket reportedly crashed into the moon back in March.
And the weird thing is no one has any idea as to where it came from.
According to a NASA press release, astronomers first noticed a “rocket body” heading towards the moon late last year. The resulting collision was picked up by the agency’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which showed via images that two craters had been created from the impact.
“The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the rocket body had large masses at each end,” reads the release. “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 release notes that “no other rocket body impacts on the Moon created double craters,” adding to this rocket’s mysterious nature. That and the fact, as the Miami Herald points out, that no one has taken responsibility of the rocket or its actions.
The Sydney Morning Herald continues to report that theories of the rocket’s origins abound: Some think it came from SpaceX while others put forward the belief that the rocket is a Chang’e 5-T1 from the 2014 Chinese lunar mission.
“I’m 99.9 percent sure it’s the China 5-T1,” tells Bill Gray—an astronomer who created software that tracks space objects—to the BBC.
People on NASA’s Twitter post regarding the mystery rocket’s crash put forward some more, shall we say, out-of-these world theories. One user, for example, shared a gif of a UFO.
Another simply wrote, “We are lucky it struck the moon, huh?”
