{"id":577455,"date":"2026-07-31T16:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T16:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/577455\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T16:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T16:46:10","slug":"discarded-spacex-rocket-on-a-high-speed-collision-course-with-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/577455\/","title":{"rendered":"Discarded SpaceX rocket on a high-speed collision course with the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

A drifting SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the Moon after launching a pair of lunar landers more than a year ago.<\/p>\n

The rocket\u2019s upper stage will unintentionally slam into the Moon on Wednesday, carving out a crater and sending up a plume of dust and rubble that scientists \u2014 and skygazers \u2014 are eager to observe.<\/p>\n

Space tracking expert Bill Gray predicts an impact of 5,400mph \u2014 seven times the speed of sound \u2014 near Einstein Crater on the Moon\u2019s sunlit western limb.<\/p>\n

While scientists are not too concerned about this particular piece of space junk, it highlights the growing threat as more and more items cram into orbit.<\/p>\n

\"AA SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from the Kennedy Space Centre (John Raoux\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThings are getting crowded up there,\u201d said Mr Gray, who plans to view the aftermath from New Brunswick, Canada.<\/p>\n

It was never SpaceX\u2019s intent to hit the Moon. But space experts said the crash could have been avoided if the upper stage had been nudged into orbit around the Sun.<\/p>\n

It will be the second dead rocket known to crash into the Moon accidentally. A Chinese rocket segment dug out a pair of craters on the lunar far side in 2022.<\/p>\n

Lucky for astronomers, the upcoming collision will occur on the Moon\u2019s near side, packing the equivalent energy of three tons of TNT.<\/p>\n

The impact flash, lasting less than a second, will probably be too dim to see, according to experts. But the stream of ejected material could stretch for several miles into space.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason for our interest in this event is to figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts<\/p>\n

Benjamin Fernando, Los Alamos National Laboratory<\/p>\n

\u201cThe gravity on the Moon is low and there is no wind to blow the dust away,\u201d said Los Alamos National Laboratory\u2019s Benjamin Fernando, who is encouraging observations by professionals and amateurs alike.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the reason for our interest in this event is to figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Mr Fernando anticipates an impact crater nearly 90 feet across and 16 feet deep, too small to see from Earth but visible to spacecraft.<\/p>\n

Nasa\u2019s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea\u2019s Danuri lunar orbiter will gather before-and-after shots of the crash scene. Danuri will stray within a mile or two of the SpaceX rocket just two minutes before impact, according to Mr Fernando and his team.<\/p>\n

The abandoned rocket segment \u2014 measuring some 40 feet \u2014 hoisted two private lunar landers on January 15 2025.<\/p>\n

One of them \u2014 Firefly Aerospace\u2019s Blue Ghost \u2014 became the first private spacecraft to pull off a fully successful lunar touchdown. The other, Japan-based ispace\u2019s lander, wrecked.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe United States and China are racing to land astronauts on the Moon in the next few years (Jane Barlow\/PA)\n<\/p>\n

With meteoroids and other natural objects offering little if any warning before walloping the Moon, scientists said there is much to learn by observing well-tracked strikes by human-made objects such as the one coming up.<\/p>\n

Nasa hurled rocket sections and lunar modules into the Moon during the Apollo era for seismic measurements. Decades later, in 2009, Nasa intentionally crashed its LCROSS spacecraft and upper stage in search of ice near the lunar south pole.<\/p>\n

With the Moon as the new travel hot spot, scientists said it is crucial to improve debris monitoring and traffic control before packs of robots and astronauts arrive.<\/p>\n

The United States and China are racing to land astronauts on the Moon in the next few years.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin are vying to provide the lander for Nasa\u2019s yet-to-be-named moonwalkers of Artemis IV, who will succeed the 12 Apollo astronauts who strolled the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis impact will not be a problem,\u201d retired astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell said. \u201cBut in a future where there are long-term bases on the Moon, similar impacts would be an issue and we need not to leave rocket stages in chaotic orbits of this kind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A drifting SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the Moon after launching a pair of lunar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-577455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}