A discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage has crash-landed on the Moon.
The 4-metric-ton craft was travelling about 8 690 KM per hour when it collided with the lunar surface today (5 August).
The unintentional impact happened near the Einstein Crater.
Using ground-based telescopes and space-based assets, NASA and SpaceX tracked the upper stage, which had been used in a commercial mission.
The impact poses no danger to Earth and NASA scientists are planning to collect lunar data from the event and refine techniques for tracking objects in space.
On 15 January, SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 rocket and successfully deployed Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander to the Moon under NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative.
Solar activity and gravitational forces caused the stage’s unplanned return to the Moon. NASA and SpaceX remain in communication about the upper stage and its flight path.
Independent astronomers first identified the trajectory using publicly available data. NASA’s Centre for Near Earth Object Studies at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which tracks natural objects that could pose hazards to Earth, later confirmed the stage had a 100% chance of impacting the Moon.
Nasa explains that, because the Moon has no atmosphere to slow incoming objects, it is struck by meteoroids daily. Human‑made object impacts are far less common but do occur.
The rocket stage is expected to have created a crater about 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep, and thrown dust and rock outward as ejecta.
For comparison, a meteoroid with the same energy as the upper stage hits the Moon about every six days, so the lunar surface is constantly absorbing impacts with the same force.
The space agency adds that, although unplanned in this instance, disposing of upper stages on the lunar surface is a technically accepted and safe method and, in some cases, can be the only practical option for missions in low lunar orbit. Many operators choose controlled impacts because they provide predictable and trackable end of life outcomes.