NEW YORK, United States — A SpaceX rocket stage roughly the size of a bus slammed into the Moon on Wednesday as predicted, with a telescope in Chile detecting a debris plume from the impact.
The collision involved the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket and posed no danger to Earth. Scientists expect the impact to have created a crater on the lunar surface that NASA and other space agencies hope to document.
The European Southern Observatory confirmed the impact through observations from its Very Large Telescope. The telescope detected spectral signatures of sodium and lithium gas in the plume, which lasted about five to 10 minutes after the collision.
The observatory said the sodium likely came from lunar soil, while the lithium may have originated from the rocket.
Scientists had predicted that the rocket stage would hit the Moon at about 6:35 a.m. GMT while traveling at roughly 5,400 miles per hour.
Astrophysicist and space analyst Jonathan McDowell said the impact was inevitable based on the rocket’s trajectory.
Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory, who led a study on the expected collision, also confirmed that the impact occurred. His study estimated that the rocket stage weighed about 8,800 pounds, or 4,000 kilograms, when it struck the Moon.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter were expected to capture images of the impact site, although scientists said it could take days to receive the data.
How the rocket reached the Moon
The Falcon 9 launched in January 2025 carrying two lunar landers. The rocket’s booster returned to Earth, while its upper stage remained in space after helping send the landers toward the Moon.
SpaceX said it had performed a maneuver intended to place the upper stage on a safe trajectory. Solar activity and gravitational forces later altered its path and sent it toward the Moon.
NASA said the collision presented no threat to Earth and could provide scientists with useful lunar data while helping improve techniques for tracking objects in space.
Artificial impacts on the Moon remain uncommon, although NASA deliberately crashed spacecraft into the lunar surface during the Apollo program in the 1970s to gather seismic data.
Scientists are increasingly studying space debris as NASA and other agencies prepare for sustained human activity on the Moon. The Falcon 9 stage was one of tens of thousands of pieces of human-made debris orbiting Earth.
Experts have warned that a growing amount of debris in space could increase the risk of a chain reaction of collisions known as the Kessler syndrome.