Dead SpaceX Rocket Will Crash Into the Moon

Nobody planned this. The stage lifted off on 15 January 2025 carrying a pair of commercial landers — Firefly's Blue Ghost 1 from Texas and a Japanese craft called Resilience. Once it released them, the New York Post reports, too little propellant remained to bring it home or send it further out, and the Moon's pull took over. The Guardian quotes experts who say a path around the Sun would have prevented this. Just one other dead rocket has struck the Moon by mistake: a Chinese booster dug two holes on the far side in 2022.

For researchers, the accident is a valuable opportunity. Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist Benjamin Fernando calculates a fresh crater 66 to 98 feet across and some 16 feet deep, invisible from the ground though spacecraft cameras should capture it. Separately, University of Texas student William Jo models material shooting upward 47 miles or further. The flash lasts under a second, and experts quoted by the Guardian doubt anyone on Earth will notice it. NASA (the US space agency) and South Korea plan to photograph the site, hoping to understand what danger falling debris might create for astronauts visiting the Moon later.