{"id":403465,"date":"2026-04-29T15:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/403465\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T15:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:50:14","slug":"a-falcon-9-rocket-will-hit-the-moon-this-summer-at-seven-times-the-speed-of-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/403465\/","title":{"rendered":"A Falcon 9 rocket will hit the Moon this summer at seven times the speed of sound"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers say the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket that launched in early 2025 will strike the Moon later this summer, likely on the near side of the Moon.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Gray, who writes the widely used Project Pluto software to track near-Earth objects, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.projectpluto.com\/25010d.htm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">has published a comprehensive report<\/a> on the impact expected to occur at 2:44 am ET (06:44 UTC) on August 5. The Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s upper stage is 13.8 meters (45 feet) tall and has a 3.7-meter (12 feet) diameter. Since the Moon has no atmosphere, it will strike the lunar surface intact.<\/p>\n<p>Although the Moon will be visible to the eastern half of the US and Canada, and in much of South America, Gray said he believes the impact will probably be too faint to be seen by Earth-based telescopes.<\/p>\n<p>Highly confident in its origin<\/p>\n<p>Gray said he and other astronomers are highly confident that this object is the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that launched two lunar landers, Firefly\u2019s Blue Ghost and ispace\u2019s Hakuto-R, on January 15, 2025. After the launch, the two landers, a payload fairing, and the upper stage were all tracked following their separation. The two landers reached the Moon (only Blue Ghost successfully touched down), and the fairing reentered Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe upper stage, 2025-010D, also kept orbiting the Earth, but was a bit higher and didn\u2019t re-enter,\u201d Gray wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s had a few close passes by the Moon and Earth, but nothing that was close enough to look like a possible impact. The asteroid surveys observed it whenever it wasn\u2019t too close to the Sun or Moon to see. As of 2026 February 26, we had accumulated 1053 observations of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers say the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket that launched in early 2025 will strike the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-403465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}