- Object set to hit the moon didn't come from a SpaceX Falcon 9 but probably from a China rocket, astronomer Bill Gray said.
- Gray corrected his blog, saying the object was likely from a 2014 China space mission.
- The rocket part is still expected to crash into the moon on March 4, Gray said.
A rocket part expected to collide with the moon in March didn't come from a spacecraft belonging to Elon Musk's SpaceX, and may instead be a booster from a Chinese launch, an astronomer said.
Astronomer Bill Gray first reported in late January in his blog Project Pluto — which tracks near-Earth objects — that a booster from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was likely to hit the moon after drifting in space for seven years.
On Saturday, Gray updated his blog with a correction, saying that he misidentified the object as a Falcon 9 rocket part used to launch the DSCOVR satellite in 2015, Ars Technica first reported.
Gray said in the blog there was now evidence that the object was actually a rocket booster from China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission which launched in 2014.
Gray wrote in his blog that he received an email from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineer, Jon Giorgini, who tracks active spacecraft.
According to Gray's blog, Giorgini pointed out that the spacecraft's trajectory for the DSCOVR mission didn't fly very close to the moon, and it would therefore be unlikely that one of its rocket parts would strike the moon.
Gray then went back through his research and found that the launch times and trajectory of the rocket from China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission were a close match for the orbit of the object set to hit the moon, he wrote in the blog.
The object is still scheduled to crash into the moon on March 4, Gray said in his blog.
"In a sense, this remains 'circumstantial' evidence. But I would regard it as fairly convincing evidence," Gray wrote. "So I am persuaded that the object about to hit the moon on 2022 Mar 4 at 12:25 UTC is actually the Chang'e 5-T1 rocket stage."
Harvard Astronomer Jonathan McDowell tweeted that it was an "honest mistake" and shows the problem with lack of monitoring objects in space.
Insider has reached out to Giorgini and the China National Space Administration for comment.