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A SpaceX rocket that launched a pair of lunar landers slammed into the moon as predicted on Wednesday after drifting off course for the past year, scientists reported.
Although no one observed the actual 8,700-km/h collision, a telescope in Chile spotted what astronomers have identified as the debris plume resulting from the crash. Space tracking experts said it was inevitable that the leftover rocket segment plowed into the moon.
It’s the latest instance of lunar litter — a problem that many fear could worsen as the U.S. and China race to put astronauts on the moon. In 2022, a Chinese rocket unintentionally hit the moon following a lunar mission, and many more stray rocket pieces likely struck the moon in decades past without scientists’ knowledge.
SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman said this week that the company is working with NASA to avoid future wrecks, stressing that this projected crash was not deliberate. A combination of solar activity and gravity accidentally put it on a collision course with the moon, she said.
‘100 per cent certain’
Boston University’s Carl Schmidt said he is “100 per cent certain” that his team’s observations revealed signs of the lunar crash. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope detected a stream of sodium and lithium stretching tens of kilometres into space for at least five to 10 minutes following the impact, he added.
“We don’t have images of the impact,” but there’s telescope evidence, Schmidt said in an email.
Even before signs of the debris plume were spotted by the telescope in Chile, retired astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell noted that observations of the dead, four-tonne upper stage on Tuesday night showed it heading straight for the moon.
The anticipated crash site was a dusty, barren patch near Einstein Crater on the moon’s sunlit western limb — near the edge of the near and far sides, which is especially difficult to observe from Earth.
“There’s no doubt in my mind” that the rocket “is now in teeny, little pieces scattered over the moon near Einstein Crater,” McDowell told The Associated Press.
“As a physicist, I know that what goes up must come down,” he added.
Did anyone actually see it?
Stargazers knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, from the ground to see the plume of dust and rock ejected from the resulting crater, let alone the flash of light from the impact.
Orbiting spacecraft had the best chance of witnessing anything — or at least observing the crater after the fact.
Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek was among those aiming his telescope at the moon at the appointed time, but he came up empty. “We knew this would be a long shot,” he said.
Like McDowell, Langbroek said he had “no doubt” the rocket met its doom.
U.S.-based Firefly Aerospace plans to conduct several lunar experiments for NASA, while Tokyo-based ispace is on a separate mission for Japan.
Visual confirmation, McDowell noted, will have to wait for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to fly over the crash scene and send back photos of the impact crater. The space agency doesn’t expect that to happen until next week.
The Falcon rocket’s upper stage — a fat cylinder more than 12 metres long — hoisted two private lunar landers from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Jan. 15, 2025. It ended up adrift after putting Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s Resilience on course for the moon. Resilience wrecked, but Blue Ghost aced its touchdown, becoming the first private spacecraft to do so.
The moon is the new go-to destination in space, with NASA envisioning a stampede of robotic craft over the next several years to form the foundation for a sustainable lunar base. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will provide the lunar landers for NASA’s Artemis astronauts.
Musk’s Starship is making steady progress in test flights from Texas. Bezos’ Blue Moon lander has yet to launch. One or both landers will take part in next year’s Artemis III, a docking rehearsal in orbit around Earth.
A lunar touchdown by astronauts — the first since NASA’s Apollo moonshots — could follow as soon as 2028.
“Things are going to get a lot busier near the moon,” McDowell said. “At that point, an impact like this on the lunar surface, plowing up huge amounts of dust going for hundreds of miles around, is not going to be acceptable.”
NGC Aerospace in Sherbrooke, Que., designs navigation systems for satellites, lunar landers and rovers. The company’s technology set foot on the moon as part of the Blue Ghost 1 landing, which was spearheaded by U.S. company, Firefly.
