Uncontrolled SpaceX Rocket Stage Headed for High-Speed Lunar Crash

A discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage will collide with the Moon on Wednesday, August 5, 2026. The collision will occur at approximately 06:35 UTC at a speed of 5,400 miles per hour, roughly seven times the speed of sound.

The four-ton rocket body, catalogued as object 2025-010D, is traveling toward the sunlit western edge of the Moon. Projectiles at this velocity carry energy equivalent to three tons of TNT.

Scientists expect the kinetic impact to carve out a fresh crater measuring 20 to 30 meters wide and five meters deep near Einstein Crater.

The collision will throw up a massive plume of dust and rock debris several kilometers into space.

Independent astrodynamicist Bill Gray, creator of the Project Pluto orbit-tracking software, identified the collision course through optical telescope data collected from observers around the world.

"Things are getting crowded up there," said Gray, who plans to track the collision from New Brunswick, Canada. 

"This doesn't present any danger to anyone. But it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware is disposed of," Gray said.

The spent hardware originally launched from Earth on January 15, 2025, by SpaceX.

It carried Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 lander and ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander into orbit.

After delivering its payloads, the 45-foot upper stage lacked sufficient propellant to return to Earth's atmosphere or escape into orbit around the Sun.

Gravitational forces from the Earth and Moon pulled the vehicle through chaotic orbits across cislunar space for 18 months.

Gravity eventually pulled the vehicle into its current trajectory toward the lunar surface.

Military radar routinely tracks thousands of objects in low Earth orbit. Radar detection fails at distances near the Moon, which sits 240,000 miles away. Astronomers relied entirely on optical telescopes to compute the rocket's path.

"Even though we have tracked it since launch, our idea of when and where it's going to hit are currently fuzzy by minutes and dozens of kilometers," Gray said.

"But we will refine that and get an idea of where it's going to hit," he said.

The impact zone sits on the daylit side of the Moon. The bright sunlight will likely drown out the instantaneous flash of the impact. The resulting dust plume may remain visible to Earth-based telescopes for up to ten minutes.

Researchers from multiple institutions are preparing to observe the event using specialized instruments. Some plan to use lunar coronagraphs or lithium filters to detect traces of the aluminum-lithium alloy from the rocket’s fuel tanks.

Brian Day, lead for citizen science at NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, highlighted the scientific value of observing the event.

"One of the things that is really important here with this impact that is coming up is it serves as a reminder to us that the moon is a dynamic environment. We think of it as being static. It is not. It is being whacked. It is changing," Day said.

Astronomers note this event represents the second known instance of an abandoned commercial or national rocket stage accidentally striking the Moon. A discarded Chinese rocket booster hit the lunar far side in 2022.

The event revives discussions about space debris management as lunar exploration accelerates. Governments and commercial space companies plan dozens of robotic and crewed missions over the next decade.

Retired astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell emphasized the long-term implications of leaving hardware in unmanaged orbits.

"This impact will not be a problem," McDowell said in an email statement.

"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," McDowell said.

Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory urged professional and amateur astronomers to document the event.

"The gravity on the moon is low and there is no wind to blow the dust away," Fernando said.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will sweep over the projected coordinates seven days after impact to capture high-resolution imagery of the new crater.