SpaceX rocket stage crashed into Moon, scientists say

A SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage crashed into the Moon as predicted on Wednesday, scientists said, after a telescope in Chile detected evidence of debris from the impact.

The European Southern Observatory said its Very Large Telescope recorded spectral lines from sodium and lithium gas in an impact plume lasting five to 10 minutes after the expected crash. The observatory described the lines as chemical fingerprints, saying the sodium likely came from lunar soil while the lithium could have come from the rocket.

Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, lead author of a recent paper on the expected impact, told AFP: "I can confirm that the impact did occur."

Scientists had expected the roughly bus-sized rocket stage to hit the lunar surface at about 0635 GMT at around 5,400 miles per hour, or 8,690 kilometers per hour. Fernando's paper had estimated that the stage weighed about 8,800 pounds, or 4,000 kilograms, at impact if all of its propellant had been spent.

NASA said before the collision that there was no danger to Earth. The US agency said its scientists planned to collect lunar data from the event and improve techniques for tracking objects in space.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea's Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter were expected to image the site after the impact, but receiving those images could take days. The collision was expected to leave a crater on the Moon.

The Falcon 9 launched in January 2025 carrying two lunar landers. Its booster returned to Earth, while the upper stage remained in space to push the landers onward. Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA Science and Dragon Programs at SpaceX, said solar activity and gravity forces later put the stage on a path toward the Moon.

The Moon is routinely hit by natural space debris such as meteoroids. Artificial impacts are less common; NASA carried out deliberate crashes during the Apollo program in the 1970s to collect seismic data.