A Falcon 9 upper stage will strike the Moon in August
Bill Gray said astronomers have logged 1,053 observations of the rocket stage, which is expected to hit the lunar surface intact.
- On August 5, 2026, a discarded Falcon 9 upper stage will strike the moon near the Einstein crater, according to independent orbital analyst Bill Gray. The rocket body is projected to hit at roughly 5,400 mph.
- Following a January 15, 2025, SpaceX Falcon 9 launch, the object deployed the Firefly Blue Ghost and ispace Hakuto-R lunar landers. Since then, the 45-foot-tall upper stage has remained in a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth-moon system.
- Using Project Pluto tracking software, Bill Gray confirmed the trajectory via asteroid survey observations. He noted the collision highlights "a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware is disposed of," though the debris poses no danger to current missions.
- While the event may be of "minor scientific interest" if it creates a new crater, the impact flash will likely be too faint for Earth-based telescopes to observe. The collision is predicted for 2:44 a.m. Eastern time.
- Tracking high-altitude space junk becomes increasingly vital as international agencies plan annual lunar missions starting in 2028. Gray noted that future human activity on the lunar surface could raise the stakes for managing discarded hardware in high orbit.
15 Articles
15 Articles
Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 set for Mach 7 crash on moon's Einstein crater
Ironically, SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket might beat Starship to the Moon. Instead of gracefully landing on the lunar surface, though, a Falcon 9 rocket may soon smash into the Moon’s Einstein crater at seven times the speed of sound. That is according to Bill Gray, an astronomer who created an object-tracking software called Project Pluto. Using his software, Gray predicts that a Falcon 9 rocket, stuck in a highly elliptical orbit since la…
Used SpaceX rocket believed to be on a collision course with the...
A discarded piece of a SpaceX rocket carelessly left adrift in space will likely crash into the moon this summer, a new report finds. The renegade rocket poses no risk to the moon or any working spacecraft, the report stresses. However, the collision — which is predicted to occur Aug. 5 on the border of the moon's near and far sides — may be of "minor scientific interest" if it creates a new crater that can later be studied. What's happening on …
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