A fragment of a SpaceX rocket, comparable in size to a school bus, has collided with the Moon at a speed of 8,690 kilometers per hour. The incident was first detected by a telescope located in Chile, which captured what astronomers have recognized as the resulting debris plume from the impact.
Visual confirmation of the impact site will be forthcoming, pending imaging from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is scheduled to pass over the area and relay photographs of the newly formed crater.
The rocket debris, which had been drifting off course for approximately a year, struck the lunar surface as anticipated. Despite the lack of direct observation of the collision, the telescope in Chile was able to identify light signals associated with the debris.
NASA, along with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, are set to capture images of the impact site, although it may take several days to process and receive those images.
The Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory, operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), detected flashes of light linked to the impact event. An ESO representative stated, “We have confirmed the presence of spectral lines of sodium and lithium gas in the impact plume, observable for approximately 5 to 10 minutes following the collision.”
This object, the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, had launched a lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace in January 2025. Weighing around 4,000 kilograms, the rocket component impacted the Moon at approximately 4:35 PM AEST on Wednesday.
The collision took place near the Moon’s terminator line, which marks the transition between its illuminated and dark sides. Similar to previous impacts, the rocket stage disturbed lunar dust, creating a plume that was briefly visible but not easily seen with the naked eye from Earth.
Analysis of how the light interacted with the impact plume provided astronomers with insights regarding its composition. The sodium detected in the spectra is presumed to have originated from the lunar surface, whereas the lithium traces are likely from the rocket stage itself, according to lead astronomer Carl Schmidt.
Schmidt mentioned, “While this observation isn’t perfect and represents a preliminary analysis, I wanted to share initial findings, with more detailed results to follow.” The rocket fragment is believed to have struck near Einstein Crater, an area that is typically challenging to observe from Earth.
SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman indicated that the company is collaborating with NASA to prevent similar incidents in the future, clarifying that this collision was unintentional. She explained that a combination of solar activity and gravitational forces inadvertently placed the rocket fragment on a trajectory towards the Moon.
Typically, such rocket stages re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and either disintegrate or fall into the ocean after delivering their payload into orbit. However, due to the extra thrust required for the lunar lander mission, the second stage remained adrift in space, amongst numerous other pieces of space debris that satellites must navigate around.
Earlier this year, astronomers confirmed that the uncontrolled rocket stage, which had exhausted its fuel, was on a collision course with the Moon. Scheiman noted, “The interplay between solar activity and gravitational forces ultimately directed it toward the Moon.” Bill Gray, the creator of the widely utilized astronomy software Project Pluto, calculated the trajectory and published a report predicting the impact in April, asserting that it posed no risk to anyone but underscoring concerns about how space debris is managed.
Impacts from space junk on the Moon are infrequent. A Chinese rocket stage collided with the Moon in March 2022 post a lunar test mission, while NASA intentionally crashed a rocket stage into the Moon in 2009 to analyze the material ejected from the impact, which revealed the presence of water ice in lunar soil.
In recent years, several spacecraft intended for soft lunar landings have instead crashed. Russia’s Luna-25 mission spiraled out of control and fell in 2023, leaving behind a small plutonium-238 power source that is not expected to pose any harm. Additionally, India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission and Israel’s Beresheet lander both experienced crashes in 2019, with the latter carrying microscopic tardigrades that may still survive on the lunar surface.
NASA previously conducted intentional crashes of rocket stages from its Saturn V Moon missions in the 1970s to study the seismic responses of such impacts. Looking ahead, NASA plans to establish a lunar base and conduct routine astronaut missions to the Moon as part of its extensive Artemis program, which is expected to commence later this decade. The organization is keen to ensure that errant debris does not impact its future lunar operations.
