A four-tonne SpaceX rocket piece hurtling through space for over 18 months is believed to have smashed into the moon at high speed around noon Wednesday (India time). The school-bus-size object is the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace in Jan 2025.The rocket part is likely to have crashed into the lunar surface at 8,690kmph, kicking up a plume of lunar dust. US and South Korean lunar satellites are positioned to photograph the site of impact — Einstein crater on moon’s western limb, often difficult to see from Earth — but it may take days to receive that information. Astronomers are waiting to catch a glimpse of the crash site to study the debris that may have been caused by the collision.
‘Nasa and SpaceX discussing ways to prevent future lunar impacts’
The impact is unintentional, SpaceX said. Such stages typically fall back into Earth’s atmosphere and burn up or plunge into the ocean after boosting the rocket’s payload to a precise spot in orbit. But because the Jan lunar lander mission required more thrust than missions closer to Earth, the rocket’s second stage remained in space, floating aimlessly among thousands of other pieces of space junk that active satellites must steer clear of.
It was not until earlier this year that astronomers determined the rocket stage, which had dumped its remaining fuel and cannot be controlled, was on an orbital trajectory ending at the moon. “What has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path toward the moon,” Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX director of Nasa science and Dragon programmes, said.“This may be of some scientific interest, and we may learn some things from it,” said Bill Gray, creator of widely used astronomy software who published a report on the stage’s impact in April. “It doesn’t present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware (space junk) is disposed of,” Gray said. Nasa and SpaceX are discussing ways to prevent future lunar impacts, Scheiman said.
