The proliferation of space debris - remnants of rockets and spacecraft left wandering in space uncontrollably after a launch or at the end of their lifespan - will cause an unwanted event on Wednesday: a fragment of a SpaceX rocket will impact the Moon.
This is a piece of the rocket and the tank of the second stage of a Falcon 9, the famous partially reusable launchers that have made Elon Musk's company a global leader in this market. These 70-meter-tall rockets, which have carried out over 600 launches, consist of two stages: while the first stage returns to Earth after launch and is recovered, the second stage is single-use.
The rocket to which this fragment belongs was launched on January 15, 2025. On board were two private modules designed to land on the Moon: Blue Ghost (from Firefly Aerospace) and Resilience (from ispace). Both spacecraft are part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. While Blue Ghost successfully landed on the Moon, Resilience crashed during a landing attempt.
The piece that will impact the Moon, weighing about 4,000 kilograms, has been wandering in space for a little over a year and a half. According to Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA's scientific programs and Dragon capsules at SpaceX, the company attempted a maneuver to prevent this rocket piece from causing issues, but they were unable to stabilize its position. Scheiman explained that a combination of solar activity and natural gravitational forces placed this piece of space debris on a trajectory towards the Moon.
The impact is scheduled for 8:35 in the morning (Spanish peninsular time).
It is estimated to impact near the Einstein crater, at a speed of about 8,700 kilometers per hour, creating a crater about 27 meters wide and five meters deep. The event will take place on a Sunlit terrain and will be used by a team of scientists to attempt to record in real-time an artificial impact on our satellite.
As detailed in the observational plan published in the scientific repository arXiv.org, "the flash produced by the impact and the subsequent column of material expelled could potentially be visible from both ground-based and space-based observation facilities." However, many aspects of the event, such as its visual magnitude, cannot be precisely predicted.
Furthermore, they state that this impact "will test a system to locate impacts on the lunar surface for future seismic experiments, study the dynamics of dust and the column of material expelled by impacts on the Moon, as well as analyze the potential risks associated with impacts of artificial space debris."
This is particularly relevant considering the U.S.'s human exploration plans, with the Artemis program, and China's plans. Both powers are developing their own permanent lunar bases - the U.S. with ESA, Canada, and Japan, among other countries - while China continues its collaboration with Russia.
800 impacts of man-made objects
The Moon has previously experienced at least 800 impacts of man-made objects, including the last stage of the Saturn V rockets from the Apollo missions, or more recently, a fragment of the Chinese Long March 3C rocket that launched the Chang'e 5 robotic mission to the Moon.
In addition to impacts from artificial objects, there are many more impacts from natural sources, as the fall of thousands of meteorites creates new craters each year, as noted by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield on social media. "The Moon has no life or ecosystem to disrupt, but as we begin to land more, we need to better track what we are doing," he warned.
The astronaut mentions initiatives like The Lunar Ledger, tasked with collecting and providing centralized mission data globally to reduce risks, improve coordination, and contribute to a sustainable lunar environment at a time when our satellite has once again become the focus of exploration. According to data from this organization, there are over a hundred missions planned for 2030.