A discarded SpaceX rocket stage, adrift for over a year after launching lunar landers in early 2025, will strike the moon's surface Wednesday at 5,400 miles per hour — not by design, but by the indifferent logic of orbital mechanics. The impact near Einstein Crater will carve a modest scar into the lunar surface, one too small for earthbound eyes yet large enough to remind us that every object we send into space carries consequences we cannot always foresee. Scientists will watch closely, finding in this unplanned collision a rare window into lunar geology and impact dynamics — even as the eve