Stage of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket slams into moon at 5,400 mph

Aug. 5 (UPI) — NASA scientists were awaiting confirmation that a stray 8,800-pound section of a SpaceX rocket launched in January 2025 had crashed into the surface of the moon at 5,400 mph on Wednesday morning, as expected.

Due at around 2:35 a.m. EDT, the impact, which would not be readily visible, will be verified using images taken by specialist telescopes, with NASA saying it hoped the event would provide it with valuable lunar data and help it “refine techniques for tracking objects in space.”

Rodrigo Palominos, a telescope operator at the Parblock Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile, told BBC Radio that he had picked up changes in light around the anticipated time, indicating an impact of the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket had taken place.

Saying it might be a sign of material being thrown up from the surface, Palominos called it an “encouraging preliminary result.”

The high-speed impact would have produced a faint flash lasting fractions of a second, followed by a dust and rock plume thrown as high as 60 miles out into space.

However, no spacecraft were in the correct position to view the impact and with its position close to the “edge” of the visible side of the moon, experts warned it could take days or weeks to get a clear picture, due to the amount of processing required with images taken from Earth.

The size of a five-story building, the rocket section was part of a U.S.-Japanese mission using the Falcon 9, a reusable space vehicle, to deliver lunar landers and scientific equipment to the moon.

During the launch, the lower booster stage of the rocket successfully separated and returned to Earth but the upper section was accidentally set on an orbit that placed it on a collision course with the moon.

“What has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path toward the moon,” SpaceX director of NASA science and Dragon programs Julianna Scheiman said earlier this week.

NASA said it anticipated the creation of the new moon crater as much as 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep but said that the event posed no risk to Earth.

Bill Gray, an astronomy software developer who published a report on the impact earlier this year said he thought it might have some scientific merit but said was concerned about the amount of end-of-life spacecraft, parts and debris floating around.

“It doesn’t present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware [space junk] is disposed of,” said Gray.