{"id":7033457,"date":"2026-08-08T09:46:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T09:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/a-spacex-rocket-part-just-slammed-into-the-moon-creating-a-dust-plume-and-crater-heres-what-some-scientific-instruments-saw\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T09:46:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T09:46:22","slug":"a-spacex-rocket-part-just-slammed-into-the-moon-creating-a-dust-plume-and-crater-heres-what-some-scientific-instruments-saw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7033457","title":{"rendered":"A SpaceX Rocket Part Just Slammed Into the Moon, Creating a Dust Plume and Crater. Here’s What Some Scientific Instruments Saw"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The Korea Aerospace Research Institute captured before-and-after images of the impact site, and a telescope in Chile detected signs of the plume. However, no one was able to watch the collision live<\/h2>\n
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Margherita Bassi<\/a><\/p>\n

| Daily Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage left its mark on the moon’s surface.\u00a0
\n Korea Aerospace Research Institute via X<\/a><\/span>
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Part of a Falcon 9 rocket unintentionally smashed into the moon on August 5 around 2:35 a.m. Eastern Time, as predicted, and some scientific instruments have spotted signs of it. However, no one was able to witness the much-anticipated collision in real time, according to the\u00a0Associated Press<\/a>\u2019 Marcia Dunn.<\/p>\n

Previous\u00a0research<\/a>, which was not peer-reviewed,\u00a0had estimated the object would strike the lunar surface at a speed of about 5,400 miles per hour. NASA estimated<\/a>\u00a0that it would create a crater around 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep. But in the words of the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u2019 Kenneth Chang, \u201cIf a rocket stage crashes into the moon and no one sees it, did it really crash?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer, at least in this case, seems to be yes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have Sir Isaac Newton<\/a>\u2019s personal assurance that it did indeed hit the moon; there\u2019s no way for it to have escaped,\u201d\u00a0Jonathan McDowell<\/a>, an astrophysicist who retired from the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, tells the\u00a0Agence France-Presse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute\u2019s lunar orbiter\u00a0Danuri<\/a>\u00a0took before-and-after shots of the impact site. One of the agency\u2019s images shared on social media<\/a>\u00a0highlights a dark spot on the lunar surface that\u2019s present only post-collision\u2014and presumably, represents terrain changes caused by the crash. According to KARI\u2019s post, the spacecraft started eyeing the location around 30 minutes before the estimated impact time and carried out eight imaging sessions, reports Space.com<\/a>\u2019s Mike Wall.<\/p>\n

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Before-and-after shots snapped by KARI\u2019s Danuri lunar orbiter highlight where the upper stage of a SpaceX rocket smashed into the moon.<\/p>\n

Korea Aerospace Research Institute via X<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope in Chile also observed evidence of the impact. It spied chemical \u201cfingerprints\u201d of sodium and lithium gas within the plume of ejected material, which stuck around for five to ten minutes, according to the organization\u2019s social media\u00a0post<\/a>. The sodium probably came from the lunar soil, and the lithium might have originated from the rocket part, officials write. And team at Spain\u2019s Instituto de Astrof\u00edsica de Andaluc\u00eda shared a\u00a0video<\/a>\u00a0of the collision\u2019s ejected material, a subtle cloud emanating from the moon.<\/p>\n

Now, however, the human-made object has exploded into \u201cteeny little pieces scattered over the moon near Einstein Crater,\u201d located on the edge of the side that always faces Earth<\/a>, McDowell tells the AP.<\/p>\n

The destroyed rocket part was specifically an upper stage. Stages<\/a>\u00a0are essentially rocket propellers that operate sequentially, each detaching from the spacecraft once it runs out of fuel. Falcon 9<\/a> has two stages. The one that crashed into the moon is the smaller of them, although it was roughly the height of a five-story building and weighed an estimated 8,800 pounds. It was used during a January 2025 launch that sent lunar landers from Texas-based company\u00a0Firefly Aerospace<\/a>\u00a0and Tokyo-based company\u00a0ispace<\/a>\u00a0toward the moon.<\/p>\n

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Did you know? The privately-owned Japanese lander also crashed<\/p>\n

ispace\u2019s lander, called Resilience, also slammed into the moon<\/a> in June 2025. That failure came after Firefly Aerospace\u2019s Blue Ghost made a successful soft landing<\/a> in March 2025. They arrived at different times because they took different routes to our celestial companion. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The upper stage should have entered an oval-shaped orbit around Earth and eventually plunged into the planet\u2019s atmosphere, where it would have burned up, reports Time<\/a><\/em>\u2019s\u00a0Jeffrey Kluger.\u00a0But it drifted from the planned route. \u201cWhat has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the moon,\u201d said Julianna Scheiman<\/a>, director of NASA Science and Dragon Programs at SpaceX, during an August 3 press conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although unintended, the crash was not surprising. Independent astrodynamicist\u00a0Bill Gray<\/a> first predicted that the upper stage would hit the moon<\/a>\u00a0almost a year ago thanks to orbit-tracking software. This also isn\u2019t the first time a rocket part has smacked into the moon. In 2022, a booster from China\u2019s\u00a0Chang\u2019e 5-T1 mission\u00a0met a similarly violent\u2014and accidental\u2014end<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The recent collision highlights, once again, the growing amount of space junk rapidly crowding Earth\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n

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Our team at @iaa_csic<\/a> has captured the impact on the Moon of the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. We attach a preliminary video showing the evolution of the ejected material. The black area corresponds to the lunar disk @SpaceX<\/a> @JuanLuisRizos<\/a> @elonmusk<\/a> @tiempobrasero<\/a> @A3Noticias<\/a>\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/5Ry7hRdCeS<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Jose Maria Madiedo (@jmmadiedo) August 6, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cIt is not a good thing to be randomly sending debris into the moon,\u201d\u00a0Hannah Sargeant<\/a>, a planetary scientist at the University of Leicester in England, tells\u00a0New Scientist<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Matthew Sparkes. \u201cIt\u2019s not something we should be making a habit of. What if it hit a site of special interest? What if it caused damage to the historical Apollo landers?\u201d<\/p>\n

Humans currently have a small lunar footprint, but with\u00a0NASA\u2019s Artemis program<\/a>\u00a0aiming not just to return to Earth\u2019s natural satellite but to establish an enduring presence, that\u2019s probably going to change. And the moon, unlike Earth, doesn\u2019t have an atmosphere to protect it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings are going to get a lot busier near the moon,\u201d McDowell tells the AP. \u201cAt that point, an impact like this on the lunar surface plowing up huge amounts of dust going for hundreds of miles around is not going to be acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

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