A piece of a SpaceX rocket that had been floating in space since last year is believed to have smashed into the Moon at high speed early on Wednesday, though the impact is unlikely to be confirmed for at least several hours.
The object, the size of a school bus, was the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched a lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace towards the Moon in January 2025.
Weighing four tonnes, the rocket part had been due to hit the Moon at about 10.35am UAE time travelling at 8,690kph.
The impact was unintentional, SpaceX said. The rocket piece was expected to hit Einstein Crater on the Moon's western limb, which is often difficult to see from Earth.
Such stages typically fall back into Earth's atmosphere and burn up or fall into the ocean after boosting the rocket's payload to a precise spot in orbit.
But because the January 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.
Moon-bound trajectory
It was not until earlier this year that astronomers determined that the rocket stage, which had dumped its remaining fuel and could not 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 towards the moon,” Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX director of Nasa science and Dragon programmes, said on Monday.
“This may be of some – probably minor – scientific interest, and we may learn some things from it,” said astronomy software creator Bill Gray, 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 is disposed of.”
Space junk and the Moon
A Chinese rocket stage crashed into the Moon in March 2022 after completing a lunar test mission. In 2009, Nasa intentionally crashed a rocket stage into the Moon to study the plume of lunar material kicked up by the impact.
Several spacecraft intending to softly land on the Moon in recent years have crashed instead. Russia's nuclear-powered Luna-25 mission spun out of control and crashed in 2023. India's Chandrayaan-2 lander mission crashed in 2019 and Israel's Beresheet lander also crashed that year.
Nasa and SpaceX are discussing ways to prevent future lunar crashes, Ms Scheiman said. The US space agency plans to build a lunar base and send routine astronaut missions to the lunar surface beginning later this decade under its multibillion-dollar Artemis programme. It would not want errant pieces of space junk crashing into those assets.
