SpaceX has finally reached the Moon, but not in the way the company intended.
After months of tracking its trajectory, astronomers believe a discarded upper stage from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket struck the Moon early Wednesday, colliding with the lunar surface at tremendous speed. The impact is thought to have produced a bright flash and blasted out a sizable crater.
Researchers monitoring the rocket’s path had estimated that it would hit the Moon at roughly 5,400 miles per hour, around seven times the speed of sound on Earth. At that velocity, NASA predicted the collision could carve a crater measuring approximately 60 feet across and 12 feet deep, while some scientists suggested the impact site could ultimately span as much as 100 feet in diameter.
The accidental collision comes as SpaceX continues pursuing ambitious lunar goals. CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly outlined plans for Starship to transport cargo and astronauts to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program, with even more ambitious concepts involving a permanent lunar base and facilities capable of supporting future AI-powered space infrastructure. Despite those long-term objectives, SpaceX has yet to place one of its spacecraft into lunar orbit, let alone complete a controlled landing.
The rocket stage involved in Wednesday’s impact had been drifting through space for more than a year. It was released during a Falcon 9 mission in January 2025 that successfully launched Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and ispace’s Hakuto-R lunar mission toward the Moon. Astronomers soon realized the discarded hardware would eventually be captured by the Moon’s gravity, and by late April, orbital analyses strongly indicated that a lunar collision was inevitable.
Because the impact occurred on the far side of observational capabilities and was difficult to witness directly, scientists expect it may take time before they can fully analyze the event and confirm the exact size and characteristics of the resulting crater.
From a geological perspective, the Moon is unlikely to be significantly affected. Without a substantial atmosphere, its surface is constantly exposed to impacts from meteoroids of varying sizes. According to NASA, an object carrying roughly the same amount of impact energy as the Falcon 9 stage strikes the Moon about once every six days.
Even so, the incident is likely to renew debate over the disposal of space hardware and whether leaving spent rocket stages in lunar space represents a responsible long-term practice as activity around the Moon continues to increase.
This is far from the first human-made object to collide with the lunar surface. During the Apollo era, NASA intentionally directed Saturn V rocket stages into the Moon to support seismic experiments, and in 2009 the agency deliberately crashed the LCROSS mission into the lunar surface to study water ice and other materials beneath the regolith.
Scientists also expect this accidental impact to provide valuable scientific data. By studying the debris ejected from the collision in the Moon’s low-gravity environment, researchers hope to better understand how impact material behaves and disperses across the lunar surface.
Astronomer Bill Gray, creator of the Project Pluto orbital tracking software and one of the first researchers to predict the rocket’s collision course, said the event could still offer some scientific value despite being unintended.
“It may provide some, probably limited, scientific insights, and we may learn a few things from it,” Gray wrote on his website. “It poses no danger to anyone, but it does draw attention to the rather casual way in which leftover space hardware is sometimes disposed of.”
