An out-of-control SpaceX rocket upper stage, abandoned in space after launching two lunar landers in January 2025, is hurtling toward a high-speed collision with the Moon on Wednesday. Space tracking expert Bill Gray predicts the 4,500-kilogram debris will strike near the Moon’s western limb at 8,700 km/h, generating a debris plume.
The Mechanics of an Unintended Lunar Impact
SpaceX never intended for this specific piece of hardware to strike the lunar surface. The 12-meter-long upper stage delivered two separate payloads on January 15, 2025: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander—which became the first private spacecraft to achieve a completely successful lunar landing—and a lunar lander built by Japanese firm ispace, which crashed.
While the payloads reached their destinations, the residual booster stage was left in orbit. According to space tracking expert Bill Gray, the upcoming impact near the crater Einstein on the Moon’s sunlit western limb could have been avoided if the upper stage had been diverted toward a solar orbit.
The collision velocity will reach 8,700 kilometers per hour—seven times the speed of sound. When kinetic energy translates to impact, the collision will release an energy equivalent to three tons of TNT.
What Astronomers and Observers Expect to See
Skywatchers across eastern North America and large portions of South America will have the best views during the early morning hours of the event. Because the impact happens on the visible face of the Moon, telescopes have a chance to capture the resulting ejecta plume.
As Benjamin Fernando of the Los Alamos National Laboratory points out, the dynamics of the lunar environment work differently than Earth’s. “The gravity on the Moon is low and there is no wind to disperse the dust,” Fernando noted, encouraging both professional and amateur observers to perform observations. While the immediate flash will last less than a second and likely be too faint to be seen, the thrown-up plume of material could extend for several kilometers and remain visible for telescopes for tens of minutes.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter will take photographs of the site before and after the event. Fernando’s team projects that Danuri will come within a few kilometers of the SpaceX rocket a mere two minutes before the impact.
The Broader Threat of Orbital Debris and Cislunar Traffic
This will be the second rocket to accidentally crash into the Moon, following a Chinese rocket segment that excavated two craters on the lunar far side in 2022. But as national space agencies and private aerospace companies gear up for crewed missions, the presence of more objects in orbit is becoming a growing threat.
“This impact will not be a problem,” retired astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell stated via email. “But in a future with permanent bases on the Moon, similar impacts would be a problem, and we must not leave rocket stages in chaotic orbits of this type.”
With Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin competing to supply the lunar module for NASA’s unnamed Artemis IV mission, traffic management and debris surveillance are crucial before the arrival of robots and astronauts. Natural meteoroids and other objects offer little or no warning before impacting the Moon, but observing well-documented impacts of artificial objects provides a learning opportunity.
As Benjamin Fernando emphasizes, “Part of our interest in this event lies in determining the risk that debris impacts pose to future astronauts.” Historical precedents date back to the Apollo era, when NASA launched rocket sections and lunar modules to the Moon for seismic measurements, and in 2009, when NASA intentionally crashed its LCROSS spacecraft and its upper stage in search of ice near the lunar south pole.
As the Moon becomes a new tourist destination, the upcoming SpaceX booster impact serves as a reminder of the need to improve space debris surveillance and traffic control.
