SpaceX rocket fragments could crash into the Moon

Theo SpaceOn January 15, 2025, the Blue Ghost lander of the American company Firefly Aerospace launched into space using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, heading towards the Moon. The spacecraft made history on March 2, 2025 when it became the first private spacecraft to land completely smoothly on the surface of this celestial body. Blue Ghost stopped working after about two weeks, but one device on the mission has not yet finished its journey.

The upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, designation 2025-010D, is on track to crash into the Moon. “We have been monitoring the rocket stage since launch. Its orbit has changed a bit in the past year or so and is about to collide with the Moon,” expert Bill Gray told Space. Gray is the creator of Guide, an app used by professional and amateur astronomers to track asteroids, comets and other near-Earth objects.

The collision is expected to occur at 2:44 a.m. on August 5 ET (1:44 p.m., same date and time in Hanoi). The Falcon 9 upper stage, with a height of 13.8 m and a diameter of 3.7 m, can crash near the Einstein crater without hindrance or damage because the Moon has almost no atmosphere. At impact, the Moon will be present over the eastern part of the United States, Canada and much of South America. However, Gray thinks the collision may be too faint to observe with ground-based telescopes.

Ars Technica said the rocket stage was estimated to move at a speed of 2.43 km per second, about 7 times the speed of sound, when crashing down. The impact is expected to create a small crater, but cause no other damage.

Gray commented that the possibility of debris being ejected is quite small, and the distance between the rocket stage and the nearest Chinese exploration robots is also very large. However, he said, if he were the controller of a spacecraft on the Moon, he would still consider this factor in all plans to adjust the path.

According to him, the collision may provide some scientific information, but also shows carelessness in the way the remaining space equipment is handled. Currently, the rocket stage is not dangerous, but things may be different in a few years, when humans set foot on the Moon. “That significantly increases the level of risk. If I launch a rocket stage into high orbit, I have to think about where it will go,” Gray said, adding that trouble may not occur until several years later.