SpaceX Rocket Crashes Into The Moon

A discarded upper stage from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the moon early Wednesday morning, traveling at about 5,400 miles per hour. The impact is believed to have occurred at around 2:35 a.m. ET near the moon’s Einstein crater.

NASA estimates the new crater caused by the crash is roughly 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep. Images of the area before and after the impact are expected soon. Lunar orbiters from South Korea and the United States will also examine the location.

The rocket stage was nearly 45 feet long and weighed about 8,800 pounds. Independent astronomers initially tracked its path using public data, and NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies later confirmed the trajectory. The agency said the object posed no danger to Earth and that it would study the impact site for scientific purposes.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 launched on January 15, 2025, carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and ispace’s Resilience lander. The first stage returned back to Earth. The upper stage sent the landers toward the moon and then stayed in space. Blue Ghost landed successfully in March 2025, but Resilience’s landing attempt failed.

For lower orbit missions, upper stages usually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. This high-energy flight required a different disposal approach. Julianna Scheiman of SpaceX said the company completed the required maneuver. Solar activity and gravity later put the stage on a path toward the moon.

“But for high-energy missions, we need to perform a different maneuver to ensure the second stage itself is safe per the appropriate rules and regulations,” Scheiman said. “We did that here for the Ispace and Blue Ghost missions’ second stage, and what has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the moon.”

Hannah Sargeant of the University of Leicester said telescopes worldwide were watching the site. She noted that randomly sending debris to the moon is not ideal and should not become routine, citing risks to sites of interest or historical hardware such as the Apollo landers.

NASA and the European Space Agency are required to plan for safe disposal of spacecraft, while commercial operators currently operate under different rules.

The heavy payload on this launch required extra thrust, leaving the stage in an uncontrolled state that led to the collision course.

Scientists expect useful data and astronomers hope to capture images of a crater forming and of the material thrown outward. Knowing the mass, speed, and path of this object can still provide concrete information on how planetary surfaces respond to impacts. The flash of the impact itself was expected to last about one second.

A preprint study estimated the crater diameter between 60 and 100 feet. Material ejected from the crash could travel as far as 500 miles before falling back to the moon. South Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter aimed to image the stage before impact. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will survey the site afterward.

Artificial impacts on the moon have been rare. Researchers plan to use the data as more missions, including those under the Artemis program, seek to travel to the moon.