A 12-meter discarded SpaceX rocket stage is hitting the Moon at 5,400 mph on Wednesday, carving out a brand-new crater.
A large piece of an abandoned rocket built by Elon Musk’s space company, SpaceX, is on a direct collision course to smash into the Moon. The floating piece of space junk is the upper engine stage of a Falcon 9 rocket that was launched into space back in January 2025 to deliver two robotic moon landers. After completing its main mission and releasing its cargo, the four-ton metal structure, roughly the size of a five-story building, was left drifting in space. Over the past year and a half, gravitational forces from Earth, the Sun, and the Moon pulled the discarded rocket stage off course, accidentally putting it on a collision path with the lunar surface. When the heavy metal rocket hits the ground at seven times the speed of sound, it will blast open a new hole in the ground measuring about ninety feet wide and sixteen feet deep.
The dramatic space crash is taking place on the front side of the Moon facing Earth, near a large ancient impact bowl called the Einstein Crater. Scientists and sky watchers across North and South America, as well as parts of Europe, are keeping their telescopes pointed toward the Moon’s northwestern edge to watch for the sudden cloud of dust and shattered rock thrown up by the collision. Robotic spacecraft orbiting the Moon, including NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Danuri probe, are taking detailed photos of the area before and after the strike to measure the damage.
The accidental crash is happening on Wednesday, August 5, 2026. Space tracking expert Bill Gray, who first calculated the path of the drifting rocket, noted that the impact speed would reach a blistering 5,400 miles per hour. Warning about how busy near-Earth space is becoming, Gray stated simply, “Things are getting crowded up there”. Addressing public worries about whether the collision could alter the Moon’s path or harm our planet, NASA spokesperson Jimi Russell reassured the public, stating, “There is no danger to Earth. NASA will continue to track the booster for training purposes, as well as later observe the impact site for scientific purposes”.
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The main reason this event is happening is that discarded rocket parts left floating in space can drift unpredictably over long periods if they are not pushed safely toward the Sun. While SpaceX never intended for the rocket to strike the Moon, scientists are using this accidental moment to study how man-made objects behave during high-speed space crashes. Explaining why researchers are paying close attention, space scientist Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory said, “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”. Meanwhile, retired astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell pointed out that while this single accident causes no immediate threat, future moon bases will need better protection rules. He warned, “This impact will not be a problem. But 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”.
