Elon Musk’s Discarded SpaceX Rocket Hits the Moon: What to Know

A discarded SpaceX rocket stage linked to Elon Musk’s space company has slammed into the surface of the moon at an estimated 5,400 miles per hour (8,690 km/h).

The uncontrolled object is the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, weighing around 4,500kg and stretching 39ft (12m) in length — roughly comparable to a five-storey building.

It hit close to the Einstein Crater, an area near the moon’s western limb on the side facing Earth.

Researchers estimate the collision released energy comparable to 15,000 sticks of dynamite, or about three tonnes of TNT.

The impact was expected to create a brief flash bright enough to be detected from Earth with a telescope, though not visible to the unaided eye.

With no wind to disperse the material and the moon’s gravity far weaker than Earth’s, the crash was also expected to throw up a plume of dust and debris that could hang in the airless environment for tens of minutes.

Scientists and space agencies monitored the rocket’s final approach closely, but it remains unclear whether any images of the moment of impact were successfully captured.

Astronomers believe the collision likely gouged out a fresh crater measuring about 27m wide and around five metres deep.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, in January last year.

It was carrying two private lunar landers, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s Resilience, into lunar orbit and was not intended to crash into the moon.

Parts of the Falcon 9 are designed to be reusable, safely returning to Earth after pushing the upper stages out into space.

However, other sections are simply jettisoned and left to drift through space, where they usually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

After delivering the scientific instruments to the moon, the upper stage has been drifting through space under the influence of the moon’s gravitational pull.

NASA’s Centre for Near–Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), concluded that the rocket was on a collision course with our lunar satellite after independent astronomers noticed its dangerous trajectory.

Every year, the moon is hit by thousands of meteors that leave impact craters along its surface.

However, it is very rare for scientists to have such a good opportunity to see something with a known size and mass hit the moon.

Scientists hope to observe the flash, dust plume and crater to learn more about the moon’s history of collisions.

That data will become especially important in the coming years as the US and Chinese space agencies attempt to establish permanent human settlements on the moon. 

Without an atmosphere, there is nothing to protect the moon from asteroid impacts, which makes even the smallest space rock a potentially deadly threat.  

However, since the impact was on the very westernmost edge of the moon, it has proven significantly more difficult to observe than expected.

On X, veteran space photographer Andrew McCarthy reported that he ‘couldn’t see a thing’.

Two spacecraft in lunar orbit, Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Danuri spacecraft, were nearby but neither was in a position to watch the crash live.

South Korea’s Danuri spacecraft was in the best position, having passed over the crash site shortly beforehand.

However, the South Korean space agency has told local news outlets that it will only be releasing images once analysis by astronomers has been completed.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, meanwhile, is in position to pass over the crater in the coming days, so observations may arrive soon. 

This is the second time that a piece of human–made debris has crashed into the moon.

The first incident happened in 2022, when pieces of a Chinese spacecraft left two craters on the far side of the moon.

These impacts don’t pose a threat to any human life, and the debris they kick up won’t affect the Earth.

However, scientists are beginning to become concerned about the growing mounds of human junk piling up on the lunar surface.

There are now roughly 3,000 human–made objects on the moon, with a combined weight of approximately 190 tonnes.

Some experts are concerned that this contamination could jeopardise future scientific studies of the moon’s surface, altering the chemical composition of the otherwise pristine environment.

Some researchers have even proposed that this could hamper the search for life among the stars, by obscuring any traces of life that could have been carried to the moon on asteroids and comets over billions of years.