A discarded SpaceX rocket upper stage is hurtling toward the moon and is set to slam into the lunar surface on Wednesday, making it only the second dead rocket known to strike the moon by accident. The impact — expected near Einstein Crater on the moon's sunlit western limb — will occur at roughly 8,700 kilometres per hour, approximately seven times the speed of sound, and will carve out a fresh crater while sending a plume of dust and debris into space that scientists and amateur skygazers are eager to observe.

What to Expect From the SpaceX Lunar Impact

Space tracking expert Bill Gray is predicting the strike will pack the equivalent energy of three tonnes of TNT. The resulting impact flash will last less than a second and is expected to be too faint to see with the naked eye. However, the stream of ejected material could extend several kilometres into space and remain visible through telescopes for tens of minutes after the collision.

Researchers anticipate the 2026 SpaceX lunar impact will produce a crater roughly 27 metres wide and five metres deep — too small to be seen from Earth but large enough to be photographed by orbiting spacecraft. Because the far side of the moon is not visible from Earth, the near-side location of this smashup is considered fortunate for observational purposes.

Observers in the eastern parts of the United States and Canada, as well as much of South America, are expected to have the best viewing conditions given the timing of the event in the early morning hours. Gray himself plans to watch the aftermath from New Brunswick, Canada.

The Rocket's History — and Why It Ended Up Here

The abandoned upper stage — measuring roughly 12 metres long and weighing around 4,500 kilograms — was launched on 15 January 2025, carrying two private lunar landers into space. One of those landers, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, went on to become the first private spacecraft to achieve a fully successful lunar landing. The second, built by Japan-based ispace, was not as fortunate and crashed on the surface.

After releasing its payload, the rocket's upper stage was left drifting without any controlled disposal. Space experts say the crash could have been avoided had the stage been redirected into orbit around the sun rather than left on a trajectory that eventually intersected with the moon. "It was never SpaceX's intent to hit the moon," one space expert noted.

For more detail on the rocket's path and the crater zone, see our earlier report on the school bus-sized SpaceX rocket chunk crashing near Einstein Crater.

What Scientists Hope to Learn

Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory are encouraging both professional and amateur astronomers to observe the event. Scientist Benjamin Fernando noted that the moon's low gravity and absence of wind mean ejected dust will linger far longer than it would on Earth — making the plume a valuable observational target.

"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," Fernando said.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea's Danuri lunar orbiter will capture before-and-after imagery of the impact zone. Notably, the Danuri craft is expected to pass within a few kilometres of the rocket just two minutes before impact, giving scientists an extraordinarily close-up view of the final moments.

A Growing Space Debris Problem

While this particular piece of space junk is not considered a major concern in itself, experts say the incident underscores the broader challenge of managing an increasingly crowded orbital environment. "Things are getting crowded up there," Gray warned. The last comparable event occurred in 2022, when a Chinese rocket segment accidentally struck the lunar far side and carved out a double crater.

Unlike natural meteoroid impacts — which arrive with little or no warning — well-tracked artificial objects like this rocket stage offer scientists a rare opportunity to study impact dynamics under known conditions. NASA deliberately crashed rocket sections and lunar modules into the moon during the Apollo era for seismic research, and conducted a controlled impact mission in 2009 as well, making Wednesday's unintentional strike the latest chapter in a long history of lunar collision science.