A discarded 10,000-pound SpaceX rocket stage is set to unintentionally slam into the moon’s sunlit western limb at 5,400 mph on Wednesday. While the impact poses no danger to Earth, astronomers and space agencies plan to observe the collision to study lunar debris and improve future space traffic safety.
The Unplanned Lunar Collision Course
A massive, hollow metal shell left drifting in deep space is about to make an uncontrolled landing. The object, measuring roughly 40 feet long and weighing approximately 10,000 pounds, is the spent upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that hoisted two private lunar landers on January 15, 2025.
That mission sent Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and Japan-based ispace’s Resilience lander toward the moon. While Blue Ghost achieved a historic, fully successful lunar touchdown, the upper stage failed to reenter Earth’s atmosphere. Instead, it entered a highly elliptical orbit, floating aimlessly among thousands of pieces of space junk.
Astronomers determined earlier this year that the abandoned stage, which had dumped its remaining fuel and could not be steered, was hurtling toward a lunar rendezvous. 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 programs, told reporters.
Impact Details Near Einstein Crater
The high-speed impact is scheduled for Wednesday, bringing the heavy debris down near Einstein Crater on the moon’s sunlit western limb. Space tracking expert Bill Gray predicts the collision will happen at 5,400 miles per hour, which is roughly seven times the speed of sound.
The crash is expected to pack the equivalent energy of three tons of TNT. Because the event occurs on the near side of the moon facing Earth, eastern portions of the United States and Canada, alongside much of South America, are positioned for the best viewing opportunities during the early morning hours.
While the initial impact flash will last less than a second and remain too dim to spot with the naked eye, scientists anticipate a dramatic secondary display. Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Benjamin Fernando predicts that the stream of ejected material could stretch for miles and remain visible to telescopes for tens of minutes.
“The gravity on the moon is low and there is no wind to blow the dust away.”
Benjamin Fernando, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Fernando and his research colleagues estimate that the resulting crater will measure nearly 90 feet across and 16 feet deep, carving out a fresh scar on the lunar terrain that ground-based telescopes and orbiting spacecraft will study closely.
Observing the Debris and Collecting Data
Space agencies are mobilizing specialized hardware to capture the event in real time. NASA plans to utilize its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to compare images of the region taken before and after the crash. Meanwhile, South Korea’s space agency announced that its Danuri lunar orbiter will attempt to observe the impact up close, with Fernando noting that Danuri would stray within a mile or two of the SpaceX rocket just two minutes before impact.
Professionals and amateur astronomers alike have been encouraged to point their instruments toward the target area. Researchers emphasize that recording an artificial impact in real time offers a rare scientific window.
“Part of the reason for our interest in this event is to figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts.”
Benjamin Fernando, Los Alamos National Laboratory
NASA’s Jimi Russell echoed the sentiment, stating that while the event poses zero danger to Earth, scientists plan to harvest lunar data to refine techniques for tracking objects in space.
A Growing Crowd in Cislunar Space
This marks only the second known time a dead rocket has accidentally struck the lunar surface. A Chinese rocket segment carved a pair of craters on the moon’s far side in 2022 after completing a lunar test mission. Decades earlier, NASA intentionally hurled rocket segments and lunar modules into the moon during the Apollo era and during the 2009 LCROSS mission to search for ice.
Independent analysts point out that this week’s collision could have been avoided with a minor navigational burn that directed the upper stage into an orbit around the sun instead of leaving it in a chaotic trajectory.
“Things are getting crowded up there. It doesn’t present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware is disposed of.”
Bill Gray, astronomy software creator
With Artemis missions and commercial landers preparing to send new waves of explorers to the moon, SpaceX and NASA are actively discussing ways to prevent similar uncontrolled lunar returns in future operations.
