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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket Is About to Crash Into the Moon—and It Could Be Visible From Earth
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- DeepHorus
A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage is set to crash into the moon on Wednesday, August 5, at around 6:34 am UTC, and the impact could be visible from Earth with the right telescope. The upper stage, which helped launch two lunar landers in January 2025, will strike the moon’s sunlit western limb near the Einstein crater at a speed of more than 5,400 mph. If predictions hold, this will be the first time an impact flash has ever been recorded on the sunlit face of the moon, making it a historic event for both space enthusiasts and scientists.
The crash scenario stems from a well-documented trajectory that has been tracked since the rocket’s launch. After deploying its payloads, the spent upper stage was left in a chaotic orbit. Over the following months, gravitational forces, along with solar and lunar perturbations, gradually altered its path, setting it on a collision course with the lunar surface. The impact was first flagged by astronomer Bill Gray of Project Pluto, who has been monitoring the object’s trajectory and alerted the community to the upcoming event.
According to two new preprint studies, the impact could produce a dramatic debris plume. A simulation led by William Jo, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering, modeled the crash in high resolution, taking into account the rocket’s hollow structure. The Falcon 9 upper stage is described as an “empty eggshell” by David Goldstein, an aerospace engineering professor who supervised the work. Unlike a solid meteorite, the shell is expected to collapse from its edges inward, throwing up a broad, low curtain of soil that could spread up to 183 kilometers wide, along with a thinner, faster spike rising nearly straight up.
The simulation is considered a “best-case” model, as it assumes the stage hits straight down, engine-first. In reality, the object is more likely to arrive at an angle, which would result in a smaller and dimmer plume. Even so, the forecast suggests that about 12,700 kilograms of debris could be displaced. Laurence Trafton, an astronomer at UT Austin, says that if the plume reaches 50 kilometers past the lunar limb, it would span about 28 arc seconds—roughly one-sixtieth the apparent width of the moon—and could be easily resolved by a small telescope.
Visibility from Earth, however, is far from guaranteed. The plume is expected to be 30 to 300 times fainter than the moon itself, and scattered moonlight will make observation challenging. Observers will also need clear, dark skies and a very steady mount. Timing, at least, is favorable: the plume should peak about 90 seconds after impact, giving viewers enough time to witness the event. Geography plays a major role, too. For anyone north of a line from Massachusetts to Texas, the moon will hang low near the horizon, forcing observers to peer through a thick, turbulent atmosphere that could wash out the faint plume.
The best viewing odds are in the US Southeast, according to Trafton. Amateur and professional astronomers have been urged to train their telescopes on the predicted impact point, with observation plans already circulating. This event offers a rare opportunity to study the effects of human-made objects on the lunar surface and to refine models of how hollow structures behave upon impact. As space debris continues to accumulate in Earth’s orbit and beyond, understanding such collisions will become increasingly important, both for planetary defense and for managing the growing footprint of space exploration.
