Out-of-control SpaceX rocket smashes into the Moon | The Independent

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Out-of-control SpaceX rocket believed to have smashed into the Moon<br>Collision hit with the power of three tons of TNT and will leave behind a visible crater on the lunar surface

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An out-of-control SpaceX rocket is believed to have collided with the Moon.<br>The 4,000 kilogram spacecraft hit with the power of three tons of TNT, unleashing a cloud of dust and leaving behind a new crater on the surface.<br>Researchers had predicted that the rocket would hit around 7.35am in the UK, or 2.35am eastern time.<br>Scientists had suggested that a dim flash could be visible from the impact, but amateur astrophotographers watching through telescopes did not see any sign of the crash from Earth. Ground telescopes in America were watching for any sign of the explosion – but images may take days to appear – and spacecraft orbiting the Moon are due to send back images of the crash site as they pass over in the coming days.

The piece of rocket is part of a Falcon 9 spacecraft that launched in January 2025, carrying a lunar lander to the Moon’s surface.

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches carrying Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander as the primary payload and Japan-based ispace's Resilience lander as a secondary payload, from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral in 2025 (Reuters)<br>Usually, SpaceX’s upper stages fall back into the Earth’s atmosphere and then burn up or drop into the ocean. But the lunar lander mission needed more thrust than missions closer to Earth, and so left the rocket’s upper stage floating in space.<br>SpaceX hadn’t intended for the rocket to collide with the Moon. But earlier this year, astronomers found that it was headed towards the lunar surface, and because it had dumped all of its fuel it was unable to change course.

"What has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path toward the moon," Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX director of Nasa science and Dragon programs, told reporters on Monday.<br>Nasa officials were also keen to stress that the crash posed no danger to Earth.<br>The crash has provoked excitement among scientists, who hope to study it to better understand how impacts change the Moon, and understand the safety risks they might pose to any astronauts who live there in the future. The lunar surface is regularly hit by natural objects from space, but those collisions are harder to predict and therefore more difficult to see in close detail.<br>open image in gallery

(AFP/Getty)<br>But experts warned that the incident also highlights the growing amount of debris that is now floating in space from rocket launches – and the danger that might pose in the future, if they were for instance to collide with important satellites.

"This may be of some — probably ⁠minor— scientific interest, and we may learn some things from it," said Bill Gray, creator of widely used astronomy software who published a report on the stage's impact in April.

"It doesn't present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware (space junk) is disposed of."<br>Space junk impacts on the moon are rare.<br>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.

Several spacecraft intending to softly land on ‌the moon in recent years have crashed instead. Russia's nuclear-powered Luna-25 mission spun out of control and crashed ​in 2023. Its small power source of plutonium-238 likely remains harmlessly on the lunar surface.<br>India's Chandrayaan-2 lander mission crashed ‌in 2019. Israel's Beresheet lander crashed that same year. ⁠Among the Israeli lander's payloads were tiny tardigrades, microscopic animals known for surviving radiation and other harsh environments and which ⁠may still be on the surface.<br>Nasa intentionally crashed stages from its Saturn V moon rocket into the moon in the 1970s to study the impacts' ‌seismic effects.

SpaceX and Nasa are discussing ways ​to prevent future lunar impacts, Scheiman said. The US space ‌agency plans to build a lunar base and send routine ​astronaut missions to the lunar surface beginning later this decade under its multibillion-dollar Artemis program. It would not want errant pieces of space junk impacting those assets.<br>Additional reporting by agencies

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