SpaceX rocket set to crash into moon in rare observable impact event

A SpaceX rocket upper stage, abandoned in space for more than a year after delivering two lunar landers, is about to collide with the moon. The impact will happen Wednesday in the predawn hours, near Einstein Crater on the moon's sunlit western edge, traveling at 5,400 miles per hour—seven times the speed of sound. For astronomers and space enthusiasts across the eastern United States, Canada, and much of South America, it will be a rare chance to witness something that usually happens unseen: the violent arrival of human-made debris on another world.

The rocket segment, roughly 40 feet long and weighing around 10,000 pounds, launched on January 15, 2025, carrying two private lunar landers. One of them, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, became the first privately built spacecraft to land successfully on the moon. The other, built by Japan-based ispace, crashed. The rocket's upper stage, its job complete, drifted into a chaotic orbit that space tracking expert Bill Gray calculated would eventually intersect with the lunar surface. It was never SpaceX's intention to hit the moon. The collision could have been prevented, experts say, if the upper stage had been nudged into orbit around the sun instead.

The impact will pack the energy equivalent of three tons of TNT. Scientists predict a crater nearly 90 feet across and 16 feet deep—too small to see from Earth, but visible to spacecraft in orbit around the moon. The flash of the collision itself will likely be too dim to observe, but the stream of ejected material could stretch for several miles into space and remain visible through telescopes for tens of minutes. "The gravity on the moon is low and there is no wind to blow the dust away," said Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory, who is encouraging both professional and amateur astronomers to document what they see. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea's Danuri lunar orbiter are positioned to capture before-and-after images of the crash site. Danuri will pass within a mile or two of the SpaceX rocket just two minutes before impact.

This collision is not an isolated incident. A Chinese rocket segment struck the moon's far side in 2022, creating two craters. But this SpaceX impact occurs on the near side, where it can be observed and studied from Earth. The scientific value lies not in the impact itself, which poses no immediate threat, but in what it reveals about debris hazards. "Part of the reason for our interest in this event is to figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts," Fernando wrote. Meteoroids and other natural objects strike the moon constantly, but they arrive with little warning and cannot be tracked. A well-documented collision with a human-made object offers a rare opportunity to measure and understand the consequences.

The timing of this crash underscores a growing concern in space exploration. 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 lunar lander for NASA's Artemis IV mission, which will put the next humans on the lunar surface. As more spacecraft, landers, and equipment accumulate in lunar orbit and on the surface, the risk of collisions and debris impacts will only increase. "Things are getting crowded up there," Gray observed. 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." The SpaceX rocket's unintended journey to the moon is a preview of challenges that will demand better monitoring, traffic control, and orbital discipline as the moon transforms from a destination into a destination with residents.