SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage crashes into moon near Einstein crater

A detached portion of a SpaceX rocket collided with the moon Wednesday morning, a NASA official confirmed to Fox News Digital.

The impact was made by the 8,818-pound upper portion of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket while traveling at a speed of 5,400 mph, according to Reuters.

The rocket stage is “expected to create a crater about 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep and throw dust and rock outward as ejecta,” the NASA official told Fox News Digital.

SpaceX launched the rocket in January 2025 as part of a mission to land the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission 1 lunar lander on the moon. The upper portion was not supposed to return to the moon, but was pulled back to the lunar surface due to “solar activity and gravitational forces,” the NASA official said.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed Tuesday that the rocket portion had “a 100% chance of impacting the Moon.”

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A SpaceX rocket stage crashed into the lunar surface on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (iStock / iStock)

Despite the uncommon nature of manmade objects hitting the moon, NASA advised that there is no danger to Earth, adding that “a meteoroid with the same energy as the upper stage hits the Moon about every six days,” according to the official.

The discarded section was projected to impact the moon near the Einstein crater at 2:35 a.m. Wednesday, according to NASA.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s Resilience lunar landers, streaks into orbit after lifting off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Jan. 15, 2025. (Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty Images)

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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman also said the impact was not a cause for concern during a Wednesday morning appearance on “Fox and Friends,” adding that the development of reusable rockets will further decrease the likelihood of future impacts.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman delivers remarks at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Ascend Conference on May 19, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“First of all, I’d say we’ve made a ton of progress. America leads the world in this regard. It used to be the case that all rockets were disposed in the ocean. Now you’ve watched over the last few years, I mean, SpaceX has recovered more than 600 of their boosters by bringing them back in a spectacular way to land on ships and land back on land,” he said.

“First, it’s very infrequent to have things like the Falcon 9 second stage crash into the moon. Second, it’s not a big deal right now. The moon has clearly seen better days, but once you have reusable upper stages like Starship is doing, you’re not going to be throwing them away, you’re going to be turning them, landing them on the moon, and they’re going to contribute to the city block we’re trying to build on the lunar surface,” Isaacman concluded.

Not only was the impact expected to cause minimal damage, NASA hopes that it will actually be able to study the event and garner scientific insights from observation.

NASA will use the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the ShadowCam instrument aboard South Korea’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter to “look for chances to image the site before and after the impact,” the official told Fox News Digital.

“Image availability will depend on lighting, orbital timing, and spacecraft position, and it may take several days to receive imagery. Any data collected will help scientists better understand artificial impacts and their exploration implications,” the official added.

Fox News Digital contacted SpaceX for added comment.

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Fox News Digital’s Preston Mizell and Reuters contributed to this report.