A SpaceX Rocket Is Thought To Have Crashed Into The Moon

In May of this year, astronomer Bill Gray said on his site, Project Pluto, that a large section of SpaceX rocket Falcon 9 was set to crash into the moon on August 5.

He couched his prediction a little, saying: “I can be sure it will impact near the time and place I’ve predicted, but those varying forces mean that the actual impact will be at least a little off from that time and place”.

But scientists, including those from the Paranal Observatory in Chile, seem to have spotted the crash on its predicted date this morning. Nasa expected the incident to have taken place at 7:35am BST.

The space agency added that the collision will probably leave an 18-metre-wide, 14-metre-deep crater on the moon’s surface.

It could take days or weeks to confirm images of the suspected impact, however.

Speaking to the BBC, NASA spokesperson Jimi Russell said there’s no risk to us here on Earth as a result of the crash.

And Dr Matt Bothwell, public astronomer at the University of Cambridge, also told the broadcaster: “It’s something really huge smashing into the moon. It’s not remotely dangerous; we can just watch the show”.

We’ve even sent items to crash into the moon on purpose before.

Per ScienceAlert, the Falcon 9 is a partially reusable rocket, which means “its first, larger stage returns to Earth and alights on a barge so it can be refilled and re-flown, while the second stage remains in orbit”.

The part believed to have hit the moon is that second bit – the “upper stage” of the rocket, which carries the payload of the vessel.

Usually, companies leave this part of a rocket in orbit. They’re often designed to detach.

The section some believe may have hit the moon has been orbiting the Earth for about a year. It was the 10th rocket launched by the company, whose CEO is Elon Musk, in 2025.

On Monday, Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX’s director of NASA science and Dragon programmes, told reporters: “What has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put [the rocket segment] on a path toward the moon.”

Leftover parts like these form a phenomenon Gray calls “space junk”.

Usually, debris left in space is guided by the gravity of celestial bodies around it, like the Earth and moon. That can help to make tracking and predicting their movements easier, and formed most of the basis of astronomers’ predictions.

But these objects are also moved around by sunlight. This is a very slight force, but it adds up over time. As the object moves around, it’s hard to say exactly how much sun will hit it.

Despite this variable, however, scientists seem to have been pretty accurate in their guesses here.

That’s highly unlikely without special equipment, BBC Sky At Night suggests.

And even with great telescopes, amateur and pro astronomers alike might struggle to spot the expected dust plume a crash may kick up as it’s likely to have happened near the visible edges of the moon.