SpaceX rocket set to crash into moon at 5,400 mph, offering rare research opportunity

A spent SpaceX rocket, abandoned in space for more than a year after delivering two lunar landers, is about to collide with the moon at 5,400 miles per hour—seven times the speed of sound. The upper stage will strike the lunar surface near Einstein Crater on the moon's sunlit western edge, carving out a crater and hurling dust and rock debris miles into the airless void. For astronomers and space scientists, the crash is an unexpected gift: a chance to observe the aftermath of a high-speed impact in real time, and to gather data about the hazards that space junk poses to future lunar explorers.

The rocket launched on January 15, 2025, carrying two private lunar landers. One, built by Firefly Aerospace and called Blue Ghost, achieved what no private spacecraft had done before—a fully successful landing on the moon. The other, operated by Japan-based ispace, crashed. Once their payloads were delivered, the rocket's upper stage drifted into an unstable orbit, eventually locked on a collision course with the lunar surface. Space tracking expert Bill Gray, who will observe the impact from New Brunswick, predicts the strike will occur in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, making it visible from the eastern United States and Canada, as well as much of South America.

The impact itself will pack the energy equivalent of three tons of TNT. The flash of light, lasting less than a second, will likely be too faint to see with the naked eye. But the ejected material—a stream of pulverized lunar soil and rock—could stretch several miles into space and remain visible through telescopes for tens of minutes. Benjamin Fernando, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, expects the collision to carve a crater roughly 90 feet across and 16 feet deep, too small to observe from Earth but easily visible to orbiting spacecraft. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea's Danuri lunar orbiter will both capture before-and-after images of the impact site. Danuri will pass within a mile or two of the rocket just two minutes before it hits.

This is not the first time human-made space debris has struck the moon. A Chinese rocket segment crashed into the lunar far side in 2022, creating a pair of craters. But this collision offers a rare research opportunity because it will occur on the near side of the moon, where it can be closely observed and studied. Scientists are eager to gather data about how impacts create and distribute debris—information that will become increasingly important as lunar activity accelerates. The United States and China are both racing to land astronauts on the moon within the next few years. SpaceX and Blue Origin are competing to build the lander for NASA's Artemis IV mission, which will put the first humans on the lunar surface since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

The unintended collision highlights a growing problem in space: orbital congestion. "Things are getting crowded up there," Gray observed. While scientists are not alarmed about this particular piece of debris, the broader trend is troubling. Space experts say the crash could have been prevented if the upper stage had been nudged into a stable orbit around the sun instead of left to drift. Fernando emphasized that understanding the hazards posed by debris impacts is crucial before astronauts establish long-term bases on the moon. Retired astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell put it plainly: "This impact will not be a problem. But in a future where there are long-term bases on the moon, similar impacts would be an issue and we need not to leave rocket stages in chaotic orbits of this kind." As lunar exploration intensifies, scientists say improved debris monitoring and traffic control systems will be essential to keep the moon safe for human habitation.