Spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage crashes into the Moon near Einstein Crater
A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage hit the Moon near Einstein Crater on August 5 at about 5,400 mph, carving a fresh crater roughly 20 to 30 meters wide. The four-ton stage had drifted since a January 2025 launch carrying Firefly's Blue Ghost and ispace's Hakuto-R landers, per N
A spent upper stage from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket struck the Moon near Einstein Crater early on August 5, 2026, traveling at roughly 5,400 miles per hour at the moment of impact. The four-metric-ton stage originated from the January 15, 2025 Falcon 9 launch that carried Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 and ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 2 (Resilience) landers under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. After completing its job, the stage spent roughly 18 months looping around Earth before its orbit decayed into the Moon. The impact carved a new crater estimated at 20 to 30 meters wide on the lunar surface. The European Southern Observatory detected sodium and lithium gas in the resulting debris plume, with the spectral signatures visible for five to ten minutes. NASA said it would attempt to observe the impact using its own assets. Every discarded rocket stage left in a high orbit after a mission is a future, unplanned lunar or Earth impact, and tracking them accurately depends on data voluntarily shared by launch operators rather than any binding disposal requirement.