CALGARY — A massive piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster slammed into the moon at high speed early Wednesday after drifting through space for more than a year.The collision occurred at roughly 2:35 a.m. EST, striking near the Einstein and Bell craters.NASA scientists expected the impact would have carved a new crater into the moon’s surface roughly 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep.The 4,000-kilogram rocket — which launched in January 2025 — was about 45 feet long and 12 feet wide, and had been travelling at roughly 8,700 km/h when it struck the lunar surface..While no craft was orbiting the moon to capture the collision as it occurred, a telescope in Chile later detected what astronomers believe was a plume of debris thrown up by the impact.Space tracking experts had predicted the collision after determining the rocket stage was on an unavoidable trajectory toward the lunar surface, with SpaceX confirming the crash was not intentional.Julianna Scheiman of SpaceX said a combination of solar activity and gravitational forces had inadvertently pushed the discarded stage onto a collision course with the moon..LISIKH: Beyond the blue — how SpaceX and reusable rockets are fuelling a new space economy.She said SpaceX is working with NASA to prevent similar incidents in the future.NASA public affairs specialist Jimi Russell said the collision would have been difficult to see with the naked eye from Earth and that “NASA scientists are planning to collect lunar data from the event and refine techniques for tracking objects in space.”Russell said that although the rocket’s impact on the moon was unplanned in this instance, “disposing of upper stages on the lunar surface is a technically accepted and safe method and, in some cases, can be the only practical option for missions in low lunar orbit.”“Many operators choose controlled impacts because they provide predictable and trackable end-of-life outcomes,” she said.
