It has been revealed that Elon Musk's SpaceX is not responsible for potentially causing a crater on the lunar surface, as previously reported. Instead, it is believed that a piece of a rocket launched by China's space agency may be the cause. Bill Gray, the developer of Project Pluto, recently announced that the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was on a trajectory that could intersect with the path of the moon. This rocket had launched the Deep Space Climate Observatory for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in February 2015. Gray had been monitoring this rocket part for years, and in January, it passed within 6,000 miles of the moon's surface. The moon's gravity then altered its path, potentially causing it to crash on a subsequent orbit. Reports from amateur astronomers who saw the object pass by Earth once again confirmed that it was heading towards an impact inside Hertzsprung, an old crater that is 315 miles wide. However, an email received on Saturday from Jon Giorgini, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, changed the situation. Giorgini oversees Horizons, an online database that can provide information on the locations and orbits of nearly 1.2 million objects in the solar system, including approximately 200 spacecraft. When a Horizons user asked Giorgini about the likelihood of the object being part of the DSCOVR rocket, he decided to investigate further. He discovered that the orbit did not match the trajectory of DSCOVR and reached out to Gray. Gray initially believed he was correct, but then searched through his past emails to recall when the object was first observed in March 2015, approximately a month following the launch of DSCOVR. The majority of new objects identified in space are typically asteroids, and this object was also initially thought to be one. It was labeled as WE0913A. However, it was discovered that WE0913A was orbiting Earth, not the sun, indicating that it likely originated from Earth. Gray suggested that it could be part of the rocket that launched DSCOVR. Subsequent data showed that WE0913A passed the moon two days after DSCOVR's launch, confirming the identification. Gray now understands his mistake in assuming DSCOVR was headed towards the moon for a gravity assist, when in fact it was launched on a direct path that did not involve the moon, as Giorgini pointed out. Gray admitted that he regretted not reviewing the information before making his January announcement. After Jon Giorgini brought it to his attention, it was evident that he had made a mistake. SpaceX did not provide a comment on the matter, but it is likely that they have not been monitoring the rocket stage in question. Typically, the second stage of a Falcon 9 is disposed of by burning up in the atmosphere, but in this instance, the rocket needed all its propellant to deliver DSCOVR to its intended location. However, the second stage, which was not powered or controlled, was in an orbit that was not likely to pose a threat to any satellites, and it was probably not being monitored by anyone. Gray expressed a wish for the organizations responsible for launching these boosters into high orbits to publicly disclose information about what they are sending up there and where it is going, rather than leaving it up to him to investigate. Gray then began investigating other recent launches, particularly those headed towards the moon, in an attempt to determine the identity of the object. "There are not many launches in that category," Gray noted. The top contender for the mission was a Long March 3C rocket that was responsible for launching China's Chang'e-5 T1 spacecraft on October 23, 2014. The spacecraft circled the moon before returning to Earth, releasing a small return capsule that landed in Mongolia. This was a test run for the Chang'e-5 mission in 2020, which successfully collected moon rocks and dust for analysis on Earth. By running a computer simulation of the orbit of WE0913A in the past, it was determined that it would have passed close to the moon on October 28, just five days after the Chinese launch. Furthermore, data from a cubesat attached to the third stage of the Long March rocket closely matched that of WE0913A, according to Gray. "It is a case that could probably be presented to a jury for a conviction," stated Christophe Demeautis, an amateur astronomer in northeast France, as more observations this month have slightly adjusted the prediction of the object's impact on the moon. The crash is still expected to occur at about 7:26 am Eastern time, without any chance of missing the moon. However, because the impact will be on the far side of the moon, it will not be visible from Earth's telescopes or satellites. The whereabouts of the Falcon 9 part, specifically the DSCOVR second stage, are still being investigated, according to Gray. It is believed that the object ended up orbiting the sun instead of the Earth, making it currently out of sight. There have been cases of old rocket pieces reappearing, such as a mystery object discovered in 2020 that was part of a rocket launched in 1966 for NASA's Surveyor missions to the moon.