Confirmed: Upper Stage of SpaceX Rocket Hit the Moon at 8,690 km/h
Scientists using telescopes in Chile detected chemical traces of the impact, which will help better understand space debris and protect future lunar missions.
Scientists using telescopes in Chile detected chemical traces of the impact, which will help better understand space debris and protect future lunar missions.
The upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk's American company SpaceX was confirmed to have struck the Moon's surface on Wednesday, August 5, 2026. The unplanned collision occurred at 06:35 GMT, with the first indirect evidence recorded by scientists using powerful ground-based telescopes.
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced that its Very Large Telescope, located in Chile, "detected spectral lines" representing "chemical fingerprints" of sodium and lithium in the dust cloud that rose after the impact and lasted between five and ten minutes. "The sodium likely originates from the lunar soil, while the lithium may come from the rocket itself," ESO officials explained.
The impact was also confirmed to AFP by Benjamin Fernando, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and lead author of a recent study on this anticipated event. The rocket's upper stage, about the size of a bus and weighing approximately four tons, is estimated to have struck the Moon at a speed of roughly 8,690 kilometers per hour near the Einstein crater on the Moon's northern hemisphere.
Scientists estimate the impact created a crater about 18 meters in diameter and 3.7 meters deep. Before the impact, NASA had already stated there was "no danger to Earth" and that they planned to use the event to gather data. "NASA scientists plan to collect lunar data from this event to improve techniques for tracking objects in space," the agency said in a statement.
According to SpaceX's social media posts, the Falcon 9 rocket was launched on January 15, 2025, from Florida, carrying two lunar landers: Blue Ghost Mission 1 by Firefly Aerospace and RESILIENCE by ispace. While the rocket's first stage successfully returned to Earth, the upper stage continued its mission and remained in space.
Julianna Scheiman, a SpaceX official, explained during a NASA press conference that "a combination of solar activity and gravitational forces eventually placed" the stage on a trajectory toward the Moon. In a statement, SpaceX noted that for high-energy missions, such as those to lunar transfer orbit, a controlled disposal maneuver is not always possible. "In this case, over time, solar activity and gravity directed the second stage toward the Moon. Such impacts are rare but can occur with objects in these orbits, and we have worked with NASA on the optimal disposal solution," the company's statement read.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea's Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter are planned to image the impact site, although images may arrive with a delay of several days. Scientists hope that studying the dust cloud will help better understand the risks that artificial space debris poses to future missions, especially in the context of NASA's plans to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon. In the past, during the Apollo program, NASA deliberately caused impacts to collect seismic data.
Although the Moon is regularly struck by meteoroids, collisions with artificial objects are much rarer. This is not the first such incident; in 2022, a Chinese rocket also hit the Moon. The problem of space debris in Earth's orbit is becoming increasingly pronounced. According to data from the European Space Agency (ESA) from late July, there are currently more than 46,000 pieces of space debris in orbit, with a total mass of about 17,000 tons, and some experts warn of the danger of an uncontrolled chain reaction of collisions known as Kessler syndrome.
