SpaceX Rocket Upper Stage Hits Moon, Revealing New Data

SpaceX Falcon 9 Upper Stage Strikes the Moon

The piece of space hardware measured about the size of a five-story building, spanning roughly 45 feet long and 12 feet wide, and weighed about 4,000 kilograms (8,800 pounds) on Earth. Independent astronomers initially used publicly available data to track the upper stage and determine its collision course, a trajectory later confirmed by NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies.

The Falcon 9 rocket had originally launched on January 15, 2025, to send two commercial lunar landers toward the Moon, including Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. While the reusable first-stage booster returned to Earth, the upper stage remained in space, drifting through a looping orbit shaped by the gravity of Earth, the Moon, and the Sun. Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX’s director of NASA Science and Dragon Programs, explained at a NASA press conference that a mixture of solar activity and gravitational forces eventually put the spent stage on an unplanned path toward the Moon.

Telescopic Observations and the Gas Plume

The impact posed no danger to Earth, and the crash itself was impossible to see with the naked eye from over 225,000 miles away. Researchers noted that detecting the impact flash was challenging because the collision occurred near the Moon’s terminator line on the lit side of the lunar surface.

However, professional observatories successfully tracked the aftermath. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile used spectroscopy to detect spectral lines of sodium and lithium gas in the impact plume. Dr. Bárbara Ferreira, media manager for ESO’s department of communication, confirmed that the gas plume lasted for five to 10 minutes after impact.

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Carl Schmidt, a research assistant professor of astronomy at Boston University’s Center for Space Physics who led the Very Large Telescope observations, stated that the resulting plume stretched a few tens of kilometers across. According to Schmidt, the sodium likely originated from lunar soil, while the lithium came from the rocket stage itself.

South Korea’s space agency, the Korea AeroSpace Administration, released before-and-after images captured by its Danuri lunar orbiter, also called the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter. The pictures displayed a darker patch where the spacecraft struck, offering scientists their first orbital look at the fresh damage. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also targeted the site for imagery.

Crater Formation and Lunar Debris Concerns

Before the collision, researchers estimated the impact would release energy comparable to several tons of TNT. Scientists predicted the event would gouge out a massive crater roughly 20 meters wide and 5 meters deep, or up to 65 to 100 feet wide and 12 to 16 feet deep.

While artificial impacts remain relatively rare compared to daily meteoroid strikes, scientists emphasized that the event provided valuable insight into how ejecta plumes behave, helping researchers understand lunar geology.

With space agencies planning a long-term human presence on the Moon, managing the accumulation of space debris in cislunar space will increasingly become an issue. Matt Bothwell, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge, noted to the Zmescience that space is getting increasingly crowded as more objects are launched each year. SpaceX stated that it worked with NASA on optimal disposal solutions and actively strives for responsibility with space hardware, noting that such impacts remain rare for objects in those specific orbits.