SpaceX Rocket Crashes Into Moon as Predicted, Scientists Confirm

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket upper stage that launched a pair of lunar landers in January 2025 crashed into the Moon on Wednesday as scientists had predicted, striking the lunar surface at approximately 5,400 mph (8,700 km/h) near the Einstein Crater, according to AP News.

The impact, which packed the equivalent energy of three tons of TNT, was confirmed through telescope observations of a debris plume and spectral lines detected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Boston University’s Carl Schmidt said he is “100% certain” the observations revealed signs of the lunar crash, noting that the telescope detected a stream of sodium and lithium stretching for miles into space for at least five to ten minutes following the impact.

A Wayward Rocket’s 18-Month Journey

The spent upper stage — a fat cylinder more than 40 feet (12 meters) long, weighing around 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg) and roughly the size of a five-storey building — launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 15, 2025, carrying two private lunar landers: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s Resilience. Blue Ghost went on to become the first private spacecraft to achieve a fully successful lunar touchdown, while the Resilience lander wrecked during descent.

After completing its mission, the upper stage was left drifting in a long, looping orbit. Over the next 18 months, a combination of solar activity and gravity forces put the spent stage on an accidental collision course with the Moon, according to SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman, who stressed that the crash was not deliberate.

“What has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path toward the moon,” Scheiman told reporters, as reported by The Guardian.

Confirming the Impact

Although no one directly observed the collision itself, multiple lines of evidence confirmed the crash. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile detected spectral lines — chemical fingerprints of sodium and lithium gas — in the plume of lunar dust stirred up by the impact. The plume, which measured a few tens of kilometers in size, was visible for five to ten minutes, according to the observatory.

Rodrigo Palominos, a telescope operator at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, described detecting a change in emission lines at the predicted time of impact as an “encouraging preliminary result.”

South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter later captured before-and-after images of the crash site, which were released on Thursday by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. The images show the terrain is noticeably darker where the rocket hit and carved out a crater, sending dust and rock everywhere, as BBC News reported.

Retired astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell said there was “no doubt in my mind” that the rocket “is now in teeny, little pieces scattered over the moon near Einstein Crater.” Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek, who aimed his telescope at the Moon at the appointed time but came up empty, likewise said he had “no doubt” the rocket met its doom.

A Rare Scientific Opportunity

While the crash was unintentional, it provides a rare, controlled experiment for planetary scientists. Because researchers already knew the rocket’s exact size, speed, and point of impact, the collision allows them to test models of how impacts dig out craters, throw debris across the surface, and send tremors through the Moon’s interior.

Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory noted the collision could provide valuable data for future seismic experiments and assessing “hazards from artificial space debris impacts.” He anticipated an impact crater nearly 90 feet (27 meters) across and 16 feet (5 meters) deep, while NASA estimated a crater about 60 feet (18 meters) wide and 12 feet (4 meters) deep.

“The gravity on the moon is low and there is no wind to blow the dust away,” Fernando said, as reported by BBC News. “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.”

Understanding how much rock and dust an impact throws up will help engineers design safer landers and future Moon bases. Material thrown up from beneath the surface also offers fresh clues about the Moon’s geology and how the Earth-Moon system formed some 4.5 billion years ago.

Space Debris Concerns Grow

The crash means the Moon now has roughly 3,000 human-made objects, weighing around 190 tonnes combined. It is the second known dead rocket to crash into the Moon accidentally — a Chinese rocket segment dug out a pair of craters on the lunar far side in 2022.

Space tracking expert Bill Gray, who predicted the impact, said the event “doesn’t present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware is disposed of.” NASA spokesperson Jimi Russell confirmed the collision poses “no danger to Earth.”

But experts warn the problem is growing as the U.S. and China race to establish a sustained lunar presence. The Moon is becoming the new go-to destination in space, with NASA envisioning a stampede of robotic craft over the next several years to form the foundation for a sustainable lunar base.

“Things are going to get a lot busier near the moon,” McDowell warned. “At that point an impact like this on the lunar surface plowing up huge amounts of dust going for hundreds of miles around is not going to be acceptable.”

Hugh Lewis, a space safety expert at the University of Birmingham, echoed those concerns: “We could see these kinds of events happening again in the future, then they would potentially be posing risks to human life, to infrastructure that’s there, to science.” He added that the real question is whether regulation needs to tighten and whether new standards and guidelines are needed for missions that go to the Moon.

Matt Bothwell, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge, warned that space is becoming increasingly crowded. “It could feasibly be within a few decades hard to get past Earth’s orbit because space is so crowded,” he said. “It’s called space debris and we should absolutely worry about it.”

What’s Next

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is expected to fly over the crash site next week to view the aftermath and send back photos of the impact crater. Scientists will continue analyzing the data from the crash, including the spectral observations and imagery from South Korea’s Danuri orbiter.

The event serves as a stark reminder of the challenges posed by space debris as humanity enters what Jenifer Millard, an astronomer at Fifth Star Labs, called “the dawn of the second space age.” As she noted: “We’re at the dawn of the second space age, and in a few years’ time the idea for astronauts is to go back to the Moon and stay.”

With the first crewed lunar touchdown since the Apollo era potentially coming as soon as 2028, the question of how to manage space debris around the Moon will only become more pressing. As The Guardian reported, the crash has provided scientists with a unique opportunity to study the hazards that artificial debris impacts pose to future lunar exploration.