{"id":583853,"date":"2026-08-05T10:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T10:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/583853\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T10:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T10:38:09","slug":"spacex-rocket-thought-to-have-crashed-into-the-moon-in-unintentional-collision-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/583853\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX rocket thought to have crashed into the moon in unintentional collision \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A four-tonne piece of a discarded SpaceX<\/a> rocket that has been floating in space since last year is believed to have unintentionally crashed into the moon at high speed, in a collision that poses no danger to Earth but was expected to blast out a new lunar crater.<\/p>\n

The object, the size of a building, is part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander from the US company Firefly Aerospace toward the moon in January 2025.<\/p>\n

The rocket body \u2060was due to hit the moon about 6.35am Irish time, crashing into its surface at 8,690km\/h. The impact was predicted to kick up a miles-long plume of lunar dust that, while illuminated by sunlight, would be difficult \u2060to spot with the naked eye from Earth.<\/p>\n

Professional and amateur astronomers using high-quality telescopes and cameras were not able to immediately confirm the impact on Wednesday, possibly due to the impact site being close to the visible edges of the moon.<\/p>\n

Nasa <\/a>has said the impact was expected to create a crater about 18 metres wide and four metres deep and throw dust and rock outward as ejecta.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Every week, a tonne of space debris falls to Earth as more rockets and satellites go into orbitOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The space agency said it would look for opportunities to image the site before and after the impact, with any data collected helping scientists \u201cbetter understand artificial impacts and their exploration implications\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nasa\u2019s spokesperson Jimi Russell said on Tuesday: \u201cThe impact poses no danger to Earth and Nasa scientists are planning to collect lunar data from the event and refine techniques for tracking objects in space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such rocket parts, known as stages, \u200ctypically fall back into Earth\u2019s atmosphere and burn up or plunge into the ocean after boosting the rocket\u2019s payload to a precise spot in orbit.<\/p>\n

But \u200cbecause the January 2025 lunar lander mission required more thrust than missions closer to Earth, the rocket\u2019s second stage remained in space, floating aimlessly among thousands of other pieces of space junk that active satellites must steer clear of.<\/p>\n

It was not until this year that astronomers determined that the rocket stage, which had dumped its remaining fuel and cannot be controlled, was on an orbital trajectory ending at the moon.<\/p>\n

Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX\u2019s \u200cdirector of Nasa science and Dragon programmes, told reporters on Monday: \u201cWhat has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path toward the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill Gray, the creator of a widely used astronomy software who published a report \u200bon the stage\u2019s impact in April, said: \u201cThis may be of some \u2013 probably minor \u2013 scientific interest, and we may learn some things from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware [space junk] is disposed of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Space junk impacts on the moon are rare. A Chinese rocket stage crashed into the moon in March 2022 after completing a lunar test mission. In 2009, Nasa intentionally crashed a rocket stage into the moon to study the plume of lunar material kicked up by the impact.<\/p>\n

Several spacecraft intending to \u2060softly land on the moon in recent years have crashed instead, including Russia\u2019s nuclear-powered Luna-25 mission in 2023 and India\u2019s \u200bChandrayaan-2 lander mission in 2019.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s Beresheet lander also crashed in 2019. Among the Israeli lander\u2019s payloads were tiny \u200btardigrades, microscopic animals known for surviving \u200cradiation and other harsh \u200benvironments and which may still be \u200bon the surface.<\/p>\n

Scheiman said Nasa and SpaceX were discussing ways to prevent future lunar impacts.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday SpaceX reported a smaller loss than Wall Street expected along with a surge in revenue in its first quarterly report as a public company. Despite this, shares tumbled as investors remained sceptical about the company\u2019s ability to deliver on its lofty promises. \u2013 Guardian\/Reuters <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A four-tonne piece of a discarded SpaceX rocket that has been floating in space since last year is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[171471,171472,21659,171473,171474,37784,29161,70061,10179,36601,11223,26444,11226,171475,6630,23302,229,8954,171476,14833,171477,16906,106019,4530,171478,4644,171479,66153,6503,38472,9447,46131,8569,61435,3355,61,60,171480,77542,14832,82815,171481,2091,171482,5907,17536,171483,171484,43,38256,70637,19784,171485,3185,57364,47139,171486,6509,23553,16620,3589,9333,82,171487,713,247,23292,30220,171488,19681,3186,14825,90,812,171489,171490,171491,5906,16878,48475],"class_list":["post-583853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-171471","tag-171472","tag-21659","tag-171473","tag-47th","tag-a","tag-after","tag-also","tag-american","tag-are","tag-as","tag-at","tag-been","tag-businessperson","tag-c","tag-candidate","tag-chinese","tag-college","tag-contested","tag-democratic","tag-depicting","tag-display","tag-dolls","tag-donald","tag-elected","tag-elections","tag-electoral","tag-federation","tag-female","tag-following","tag-former","tag-gift","tag-harris","tag-has","tag-having","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-j","tag-jinping","tag-kamala","tag-known","tag-l","tag-male","tag-matryoshka","tag-more","tag-moscow","tag-necessary","tag-nesting","tag-news","tag-nov","tag-november","tag-personality","tag-politician","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-putin","tag-r","tag-race","tag-reactions","tag-republican","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-science","tag-secured","tag-shop","tag-space","tag-states","tag-than","tag-tightly","tag-traditional","tag-trump","tag-united","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vice","tag-vladimir","tag-votes","tag-with","tag-wooden","tag-xi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583853","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=583853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}