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A SpaceX rocket will crash into the moon this week. Why is it on a collision course?
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage will crash into the moon on Wednesday, Aug. 5, at about 2:35 a.m. EDT, creating a crater roughly 89 feet (27 meters) wide. The rocket body has been drifting in high Earth orbit for more than 18 months. Natural forces have now sent it on a collision course.
The rocket launched in January 2025, carrying two private lunar landers: Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience. Blue Ghost landed successfully, but Resilience crashed during touchdown. Because the mission used nearly all the fuel, SpaceX couldn't deorbit the upper stage as usual. The 8,800-pound (4,000-kilogram) stage was abandoned in a moon-crossing orbit, said a study by Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
SpaceX's Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs, said a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces changed the trajectory. The impact will occur on the sunlit side of the moon, so most observers won't see it. Those with good telescopes might spot the ejecta plume.
Scientists are eager for the event. Fernando and colleagues wrote it offers a chance to test processes for locating impact events seismically and understanding hazards to future lunar infrastructure. NASA plans a base near the moon's south pole under Artemis in the coming decade.
Scheiman said SpaceX is working with NASA and other agencies to find safer disposal paths for high-energy missions. The goal is to prevent spent rockets from hitting an occupied moon. This is not unprecedented: NASA's Saturn V stages struck the moon during Apollo missions.
On March 4, 2022, a rocket body created a double crater, later identified as a Chinese Long March 3C upper stage from the Chang'e 5-T1 mission. The Falcon 9 impact adds another example of space debris reaching the moon. It underscores the need for responsible deep-space debris management.
