Could some of the rocket break up and bounce off the surface if the angle is shallow enough? Even so, such pieces will only complete one orbit at most before crashing back into the surface. I gather that, in general, high velocity impacts even at shallow angles tend to produce circular craters simply because of the huge energy dissipated almost instaneously in a small volume. There's certainly plenty of energy available and it only takes a piece going at 1.7 km/s to go into orbit around the Moon. The stage apparently weighs about 4 tonnes and will impact at 2.5 km/s at a shallow angle. It is predicted that the Chang’e 5-T1 rocket stage will impact the Moon's far side on March 4th. Follow us on Twitter (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab). Follow him on Twitter (opens in new tab). Mike Wall is the author of ' Out There (opens in new tab) ' (Grand Central Publishing, 2018 illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. And the Saturn V craters are all more than 115 feet (35 m) wide, whereas the new double crater is 95 feet (29 m) across at its widest point. None of the Saturn V impacts created double craters like the one generated by the March 4 crash, Robinson wrote in last night's update.

(Other pieces of space hardware have slammed into the moon unintentionally - while trying, unsuccessfully, to land.)

But those were intentional impacts the March 4 event marked the first known time that a rocket body crashed into the lunar surface by accident. Rocket bodies have crashed into the lunar surface before for example, NASA steered the third stages of Saturn V rockets into the moon multiple times during the Apollo program. Twin moon probes crash into lunar mountainīut further observations and calculations changed that thinking, leading many scientists to conclude that the rocket body was probably part of the Long March 3 booster that launched China's Chang'e 5T1 mission around the moon in October 2014. NASA slammed a rocket body into the moon for science Moon facts: Fun information about the Earth's moon

What happend to the moon march 4th