SpaceX Rocket Stage on Collision Course with Moon After Year in Orbit

The upper stage of a SpaceX rocket, launched more than a year ago, is expected to crash into the Moon on Wednesday. The collision, which was not planned, will occur near the Einstein Crater on the Moon’s sunlit western edge, according to independent space debris tracker Bill Gray.

The rocket segment, weighing about 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg), was part of a mission that hoisted two private lunar landers on January 15, 2025. One of them, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, became the first private spacecraft to achieve a fully successful lunar touchdown. The other, built by Japan-based ispace, was wrecked after landing. The abandoned upper stage has been drifting ever since, and its trajectory now intersects with the Moon’s path.

Gray predicts an impact speed of 8,700 kilometers per hour—seven times the speed of sound—which will produce a plume of dust and rubble visible to telescopes for several minutes. The impact will release energy equivalent to about three tons of TNT, creating a crater estimated to be 27 meters across and 5 meters deep, according to Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory. That crater is too small to see from Earth but will be visible to spacecraft in lunar orbit.

Observers in eastern North America, parts of South America, and some regions of Canada will have the best chance to witness the event. However, the impact flash is expected to last less than a second and may be too faint to see with the naked eye. The ejected material could stretch for several kilometers into space and remain visible for tens of minutes, offering a rare observational opportunity.

The crash will be the second known accidental collision of a rocket stage with the Moon. In 2022, a Chinese rocket segment created two craters on the lunar far side. Unlike that event, the upcoming impact will occur on the near side, allowing scientists on Earth to observe the effects directly.

While the crash is not expected to pose a significant problem, it highlights the growing challenge of space debris. “Things are getting crowded up there,” said Gray, who plans to observe the aftermath from New Brunswick, Canada. He noted that the crash could have been avoided if the upper stage had been redirected into orbit around the Sun, but that was not done because the mission’s primary focus was on the landers.

Fernando and his team are encouraging both professional astronomers and amateurs to observe the event. “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,” he said in an email. “The gravity on the Moon is low and there is no wind to blow the dust away, so the ejected material will behave differently than it would on Earth.”

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter will gather before-and-after images of the crash scene. Danuri will pass within a few kilometers of the rocket stage just two minutes before impact, according to Fernando and his team.

The crash underscores the need for better tracking and management of space debris as more countries and companies plan lunar missions. The United States and China are both preparing to send astronauts to the Moon in the coming years, and private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are competing to provide landing systems for NASA’s Artemis program.

Retired astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell said this particular impact will not be a problem, but future lunar bases would face risks from similar collisions. “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,” he said in an email.

Historically, NASA deliberately crashed rocket stages and lunar modules into the Moon during the Apollo era to measure seismic activity. In 2009, the agency intentionally crashed its LCROSS spacecraft and upper stage near the lunar south pole to search for water ice. The upcoming event, though unintentional, offers a rare chance to study the effects of a well-tracked impact by a human-made object, providing data that could inform future debris monitoring and traffic control around the Moon.