A discarded SpaceX rocket stage, adrift for over a year, is about to strike the moon at 8,700 kilometers per hour — not by design, but by the quiet arithmetic of orbital mechanics. The collision near Einstein Crater is the second known accidental rocket impact on the lunar surface, and while it poses no immediate danger, it arrives at a moment when humanity is actively planning to send people back to live and work on that same terrain. Scientists are turning the accident into an observatory, watching carefully not just to understand this impact, but to reckon with the crowded, unmanaged future