Plot Twist: A Different Rogue Rocket Is Going to Hit the Moon

McDowell described it as “an honest mistake” in a tweet, saying the incident “emphasizes the problem with lack of proper tracking of these deep space objects.” I reached out and asked him to elaborate.

“Well, a good start would be for some official organization with money—NASA or ESA perhaps, or the UN COPUOS [the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space]—to decide that this was something that needed doing,” McDowell responded in an email. “And then hire at least one person to do it, or parts of several people.”

He’d also like to see a UN recommendation in which countries make their deep space orbital data (i.e. last known state vector) publicly available for their space junk. This data, McDowell said, could be submitted directly to the UN, for example.

The Long March 3C booster doesn’t endanger life or equipment, but McDowell’s point is well taken—we need to know what’s out there and who it belongs to. Accountability matters, especially now that we’re launching more rockets into space than at any other time in history. Which reminds me, there’s still a discarded Falcon 9 booster floating somewhere in space. Rumors of its pending death were greatly exaggerated, so we may have not heard the last.

More: Webb Space Telescope Captures Selfie as It Aligns Its Gold Mirrors.