Ebb and Flow Effects: Impacts on Moon & Earth?

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The discussion centers on the potential impacts of the spacecraft Ebb and Flow hitting the Moon, focusing on their significant momentum and the implications of such an event. The spacecraft's speed was initially misstated as 6050 km/s, but it was clarified to be 6050 km/h, which is much slower than Earth's escape velocity. Despite the lower speed, the kinetic energy upon impact could still equate to a substantial explosion, comparable to a 600 kiloton nuclear bomb. Concerns were raised about the consequences of a miscalculation by NASA, including the possibility of debris returning to Earth and its effects. Overall, the conversation highlights curiosity about the astrophysical implications of the impact, despite the participants' limited knowledge in the field.
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OK, so the moon has a rather large mass (I found somewhere a comparison with Earth which gave a value of about 75 billion trillion Kg/M3), but the spacecraft s Ebb and Flow are traveling rather fast with quite a lot of momentum(132KG each, 6050km/s = around 800000Kg m/s). So what sort of things might happen when Ebb and Flow hit the Moon?

I'm fairly sure that someone at NASA has already worked this out, but While my confidence in natural laws is high, my confidence in human beings is not as complete and it occurs to me that what NASA thinks will happen might be a little different to what does happen.

While I'm sure any miscalculations or oversights will be very small, what are the implications of such an impact going wrong? could debris from the impact return to earth? if it does will it be spectacular, or terrifying? could the moon be rotated enough that we could see new areas with a telescope, or might it even begin to have a rotation like the Earth's?

I can imagine a whole host of possibilities, but I'm afraid my astrophysics is very limited and am curious as to what more learned minds might postulate.
 
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P_I said:
the spacecraft s Ebb and Flow are traveling rather fast (6050km/s)
You've got that number wrong by the factor of 3600.
In other words, it's per hour, not per second.

edit:
but even if it was 6000km/s, the kinetic energy of the impactor would be ~2,5*10^15J, or the equivalent of a ~600 kiloton nuclear explosion(most warheads today have higher yelds, I believe).

The actual speed they're going to hit the Moon at is ~4 times less than the escape velocity of Earth.
For comparison, a typical meteor hits the atmosphere(or the Moon for that matter) at ~108000km/h(i.e.Earth's orbital speed).
 
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Thanks. heh, After expecting it to be 6050km/s , 6050km/hr seems so slow!

Ah well, still very interesting. (not as interesting as putting people there though)
Cheers.
 
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