A drifting SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon and will crash into the lunar surface at seven times the speed of sound next week, experts believe.
The rocket’s upper stage will unintentionally slam into the moon on Wednesday, with the explosive impact expected to be the equivalent to three tons of TNT.
The impact will carve out a crater and send up a plume of dust and rubble that scientists and skygazers are eager to observe.
Space tracking expert Bill Gray predicts an impact of 5,400 mph near Einstein Crater on the moon’s sunlit western limb.
While scientists are not too concerned about this particular rocket, which was used to launch a pair of lunar landers around a year ago, it highlights the growing threat as more and more items clutter orbit.
‘Things are getting crowded up there,’ said Mr Gray, who plans to view the aftermath from New Brunswick, Canada.
It was never SpaceX’s intent to hit the moon. But space experts said the crash could have been avoided if the upper stage had been nudged into orbit around the sun.
It will be the second dead rocket known to crash into the moon accidentally. A Chinese rocket segment dug out a pair of craters on the lunar far side in 2022.
Elon Musk, the founder, CEO and chief engineer of Space X, pictured at VIVA Technology in Paris in 2023
SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship lifts off for a test flight from Starbase, Texas on July 24, 2026
The impact flash, lasting less than a second, will probably be too dim to see, according to experts.
But the stream of ejected material could stretch for several miles into space and remain visible to telescopes for tens of minutes.
‘The gravity on the moon is low and there is no wind to blow the dust away,’ said Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Benjamin Fernando.
‘Part of the reason for our interest in this event is to figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts.’
Mr Fernando anticipates an impact crater nearly 90 feet across and 16 feet deep, too small to see from Earth but visible to spacecraft.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter will gather before-and-after shots of the crash scene.
Danuri will stray within a mile or two of the SpaceX rocket just two minutes before impact, according to Mr Fernando and his team.
