Astronomers discovered a rocket body heading toward a lunar collision late last year. Impact occurred March 4, with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter later spotting the resulting crater. Surprisingly the crater is actually two craters, an eastern crater (18-meter diameter, about 19.5 yards) superimposed on a western crater (16-meter diameter, about 17.5 yards).

The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the rocket body had large masses at each end. Typically a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the motor end; the rest of the rocket stage mainly consists of an empty fuel tank.

This image comes to you from Mount Etna, Sicily, where a lunar analog study focusing on robotic exploration is currently unfolding.

The project—named the ARCHES Space-Analog Demonstration—is a multi-agency, multi-robot event brought to life by the German Aerospace Center DLR, and featuring significant ESA participation. ESA will be joining the project to run the latest and final part of the Analog-1 campaign, the completion of which will mark the culmination of one of the agency's long-term research endeavors, dating back to 2008.

For four weeks spanning 12 June to 9 July, the project will explore the operations and technologies that enable a sample return mission on the lunar surface involving an astronaut on the Lunar Gateway with a rover operations control room on Earth and scientific expertise on-hand at other control centers.

As part of the simulation, ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter will control a rover stationed 2,600 m up on the slopes of Mt. Etna from a room 23 km away in the nearby town of Catania. This distance simulates the sort of remote-control situations astronauts will encounter at the lunar Gateway.