A 4,000-kilogram piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket slammed into the Moon at 8,690 kilometres an hour Wednesday afternoon, highlighting growing concerns about the disposal of space hardware as private companies and governments race to expand lunar operations.
The school-bus-sized object — the second stage of a rocket that launched a Firefly Aerospace lunar lander in January 2025 — struck near Einstein Crater on the Moon's western limb around 4:35pm AEST. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope at Chile's Paranal Observatory detected spectral lines of sodium and lithium gas in the impact plume, which lasted five to 10 minutes after impact.
Tracking the Collision
Bill Gray, creator of widely used astronomy software Project Pluto, said the impact presented no danger but "does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware [space junk] is disposed of." By January, he was pretty sure it would hit, though with only a vague idea as to where. By April, he was confident enough to post an announcement.
SpaceX's Julianna Scheiman said this week the company was working with NASA to track future wrecks. She stressed this projected crash wasn't deliberate — a combination of solar activity and gravity accidentally put it on a collision course with the Moon.
Scientific Value Questioned
Carl Schmidt, the lead astronomer conducting the impact observations, said the sodium gas evidenced in the spectra is believed to have originated from the lunar soil, while the traces of lithium may have come from the rocket stage itself. "This observation did not go perfectly, and this is a very crude analysis, but I wanted to share something quickly, and we can say more about these results in time," he said.
Gray said the event "may be of some, probably minor, scientific interest, and we may learn some things from it." NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter probe and South Korea's Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter were planning to take images of the site after impact, but it could take days to receive that information.
Growing Lunar Traffic
The crash comes as NASA plans to build a lunar base and send routine astronaut missions to the lunar surface beginning later this decade under its multi-billion-dollar Artemis program. The agency wouldn't want errant pieces of space junk impacting those assets.
This isn't the first time rocket debris has hit the Moon. A Chinese rocket stage crashed into the Moon in March 2022 after completing a lunar test mission. In 2009, NASA intentionally crashed a rocket stage into the Moon to study the plume of lunar material kicked up by the impact, leading to a key discovery that lunar dirt contains traces of water ice. NASA also intentionally crashed stages from its Saturn V Moon rocket into the Moon in the 1970s to study the seismic effects of the impacts.
Several spacecraft trying to land softly on the Moon in recent years have crashed instead. Russia's nuclear-powered Luna-25 mission spun out of control and crashed in 2023. Its small power source of plutonium-238 likely remains harmlessly on the lunar surface. India's Chandrayaan-2 lander mission crashed in 2019. Israel's Beresheet lander crashed that same year, carrying tiny tardigrades — microscopic animals known for surviving radiation and other harsh environments — which may still be on the surface.
Why This Matters:
As the commercial space industry expands and governments pour billions into lunar exploration programs like Artemis, the SpaceX debris strike underscores the need for clear protocols on space hardware disposal. Private companies racing to capitalize on lunar opportunities must balance innovation with responsibility for their equipment. The incident raises questions about liability and regulatory frameworks as traffic to the Moon increases. With NASA planning permanent lunar infrastructure and routine astronaut missions later this decade, uncontrolled debris poses risks to both government investments and private assets. The fact that this collision wasn't deliberate — but rather the result of solar activity and gravity — suggests current tracking and disposal practices may be inadequate for the volume of launches ahead. While this particular impact poses no immediate danger, it's a warning sign for an industry that's largely self-regulating when it comes to post-mission hardware management.