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A SpaceX rocket piece floating in space since last year was expected to have smashed into the moon at high speed early Wednesday morning, though the impact was unlikely to be confirmed for at least several hours.The school-bus-size object is the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace toward the moon in January 2025.Weighing 4 metric tons (4,000 kg), the rocket body had been due to hit the moon around 2:35 a.m.ET, traveling at 5,400 miles per hour, but none of the spacecraft orbiting the moon were expected to be in a position to capture images of the impact live.The space junk would have kicked up a plume of lunar dust that would likely be illuminated by sunlight, but difficult to spot with the naked eye from Earth.
It was likely to be at least several hours before scientists would be able to confirm the crash by studying images from telescopes in the Americas, the BBC reported.The impact was unintentional, SpaceX said.The rocket piece was expected to hit Einstein Crater on the moon’s western limb, which is often difficult to see from Earth.Such stages typically fall back into Earth’s atmosphere and burn up or plunge into the ocean after boosting the rocket’s payload to a precise spot in orbit.But because the January lunar lander mission required more thrust than missions closer to Earth, the rocket’s second stage remained in space, floating aimlessly among thousands of other pieces of space junk that active satellites must steer clear of.It was not until earlier this year that astronomers determined that the rocket stage, which had dumped its remaining fuel and could not be controlled, was on an orbital trajectory ending at the moon.“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.“This may be of s...