SpaceX rocket stage believed to have slammed into the Moon

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience lunar landers, lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Jan. 15, 2025. Photo by GREGG NEWTON /AFP via Getty Images

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A four-tonne piece of a SpaceX rocket was believed to have unintentionally crashed into the Moon on Wednesday, a collision that posed no danger to Earth but is expected to leave behind a lunar crater.

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While there is not yet official confirmation that the Falcon 9 upper stage struck the lunar surface, it had been expected to make impact at approximately 2:35 a.m. ET.

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NASA and its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter probe and South Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter were planning to take images of the site after impact, but it may take days to receive that information.

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Scientists and amateur stargazers alike had been looking forward to observing the sunlit plume of rubble and debris created by the smash.

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“It might be possible for folks with a telescope to observe the plume of ejecta created by the impact,” said Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the lead author on a recent paper on the anticipated impact.

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“It is unclear how bright it will be, which is one of the reasons why we are looking to study this event,” the researcher told AFP before impact.

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Assuming all of the propellant is spent, authors of the paper estimate the spacecraft weighs approximately 8,800 pounds or 4,000 kilograms.

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It was expected to slam into the Moon’s northern hemisphere near the Einstein Crater, at some 8,700 kilometres per hour.

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“There is no danger to Earth,” said NASA spokesperson Jimi Russell in a statement. “NASA will continue to track the booster for training purposes, as well as later observe the impact site for scientific purposes.”

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The Falcon 9 rocket made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX firm took off in January 2025, carrying two lunar landers. The booster returned to Earth, but the upper stage stayed in space to push the landers onward.

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Generally, for such “high-energy missions” SpaceX performs a manoeuvre to make sure the second stage “is safe per the appropriate rules and regulations,” said Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA Science and Dragon Programs at SpaceX, at a Monday news conference.

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“We did that,” she continued, but “what has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the Moon.”

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Like many scientists, Scheiman added she was “very excited” to see the impact.

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The paper authors encouraged both professional and amateur astronomers to attempt viewing or recording the collision.

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“This event provides an opportunity to test a pipeline for localizing impacts on the lunar surface for future seismic experiments, investigating the dust and plume dynamics from impact events on the Moon, and considering hazards from artificial space debris impacts,” wrote the research team.