SpaceX Rocket Booster Is Headed for a Crash Landing on the Moon

A piece of a SpaceX rocket is about to crash into the moon. The booster, which weighs about 8,800 pounds, is expected to hit the lunar surface at roughly 5,400 miles per hour early Wednesday morning. Scientists say the impact will happen near two craters on the moon called Einstein and Bell. NASA has confirmed the rocket part poses no danger to Earth.

The rocket booster is the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9. It was used to launch two lunar landers into space in January 2025. After the two spacecraft separated and flew off on their own, the rocket stage was left behind in space. It has been drifting in orbit ever since.

One of those lunar landers, called Blue Ghost-1 and built by a company named Firefly, successfully landed on the moon. The other lander, built by a Japanese company called ispace, crash-landed and did not complete its mission. While the mission had mixed results, the abandoned rocket booster became a new problem.

NASA says independent astronomers first spotted the booster's path using data that is available to the public. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California later confirmed that the rocket stage has a '100% chance' of hitting the moon. A SpaceX official explained that a mix of the sun's activity and gravity pulled the booster onto a path toward the moon.

Don't expect to watch the crash happen in real time. The impact will be extremely fast and cannot be seen with the naked eye. Even people with very large telescopes may not be able to spot it. Scientists also say it will be hard to see a flash of light because the crash is happening on the side of the moon that is facing the sun.

Even so, scientists are very excited about what they might learn. A small NASA satellite called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is already circling the moon. It will take before-and-after photos of the crash site, though it may take one to two weeks for those images to be shared. NASA says its scientists plan to study the data and improve their skills in tracking objects moving through space.

The crash is expected to blast out a crater between 65 and 100 feet wide and about 16 feet deep. NASA estimates it could be around 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep, throwing dust and rocks outward in all directions. The force of the impact is equal to about 2.8 tons of TNT exploding at once. That is a powerful blast, even if we can't see it from Earth.

After the crash, a cloud of moon dust and possibly gas is expected to rise above the surface. Scientist Carl Schmidt from Boston University says he hopes to study that cloud. He wants to find out how much water ice might be hiding below the surface in that part of the moon. Water ice on the moon is very important because it could one day be used by astronauts living and working there.

The moon gets hit by space rocks all the time, but most of those are natural objects like meteoroids. Man-made objects crashing into the moon are much less common. The first time a human-made object hit the moon on purpose was in 1959, when the Soviet Union launched a spacecraft directly at it. Over the years, a few other spacecraft and rocket parts have also struck the lunar surface.

In 2009, NASA intentionally crashed a rocket into a dark crater near the moon's south pole to look for water ice. That mission was a success — scientists confirmed that water ice does exist there. Countries like the United States and China are now planning to build moon bases near the south pole, partly because of that water ice. The SpaceX crash is giving scientists another chance to learn more about what lies beneath the moon's surface.