A SpaceX Rocket Is About to Crash Into the Moon. Here's Everything You Need to Know

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, en route to deliver Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience lunar landers, is scheduled to crash into the moon on August 5, 2025. Despite its initial purpose, the upper stage of the rocket has maintained an orbit that brings it closer and closer to the lunar surface. Astronomer Bill Gray had predicted this impact as early as April 2026, determining the precise location near the Einstein Crater on the moon's western horizon.

The 230-foot Falcon 9 rocket, which carried the two spacecraft, has been orbiting Earth for nearly 19 months. When the landers were released, the Falcon stage continued to orbit, seemingly unaffected by Earth's atmosphere. In 2026, Gray had calculated that the upper stage would crash into the moon, releasing an impact equivalent to 15,000 sticks of dynamite and creating an ejecta plume that might be observable from Earth.

Although NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will not witness the impact, it will pass over the site multiple times, allowing for comparison photographs and measurements of the resulting crater.