Defunct SpaceX rocket crashes into moon, kicks up dust
The school bus-sized object weighing four tonnes slammed into the lunar surface at 8,690km/h
A SpaceX rocket piece floating in space since last year smashed into the moon at high speed early on Wednesday morning, joining the ranks of meteoroids, wayward spacecraft and other pieces of space junk that have bombarded the lunar surface for ages, astronomers confirmed.
The school-bus-size object is the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace towards the moon in January 2025. Its predicted collision with the moon became a spectacle for astronomers and space enthusiasts eager to watch how it would unfold.
Weighing four tonnes (4,000kg), the rocket body slammed into the moon around 2.35am ET,, travelling at 8,690km/h (5,400 mph). None of the few spacecraft orbiting the moon were positioned to capture close-up images of the impact.
But at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope detected glimmers of light associated with the impact.
“We can confirm that the telescope detected spectral lines of sodium and lithium gas in the impact plume lasting for five to 10 minutes after impact,” an ESO spokesman said.
The impact occurred near the moon’s terminator line, or the boundary of its shadow between the sunlit side and its far side.